Wave

Today is the 6th anniversary of the tsunami. Where we lived, Bang Niang, is thought to have been the hardest hit town in Thailand. A film called 'The Impossible' is being made about it in the area at the moment. Some locals welcome it for the good it does to the economy and others find it offensive and in extremely bad taste. Today I am thinking about it all.

A film is being made about a wave.
I know a little about it.
About how it was big but not tall,
At first it looked harmless.
Seen from afar a long rippled crawl.

It didn’t stop when it should have.
I know a little about it.
How it followed you far inland.
Over ground it shouldn’t know.
Filled up houses, roads and market stalls.

A perpetual unbroken rank .
I know a little about it.
Overwhelming with silent power
Performing obsequies as it went.
Hijacking with an invaders gall.

The retreat was sudden and complete.
I know very little about it.
A pillaged and decimated scene.
A thousand land borne ship wrecks.
A toy town subject to a tigers maul.

A film is being made about a wave.
I know nothing about it.
Not the violence or the intrusion.
The shock, the fear, nor the intimidation.
Through which these new usurpers trawl.

A Fairy Tale (in rhyming couplets); just a piece of Christmas Whimsey.

“A master you will be here.”
“Quick, quick the Queen is very near.”
“But what?” His face falls, he looks aghast.
“Are these the fashions of centuries past?”
I look down to my flared jeans.
“Perhaps they were.” I have to concede.
But before he lets me explain the rest,
He’s tugged off my jumper, is pulling at my vest.
“Hey get off, leave me alone.”
“Oh but the Queen”. He begins to moan.
“The Queen? Which Queen? And why am I master?”
“Oh no, oh no, oh what a disaster.”
I stand back away from my strange adversary.
Holding my jumper and listening cursorily.
I will leave soon, back to my home,
I listen vaguely as he talks about Rome.
“So you see like The Vatican, a principality?”
“Only not the same world and without Christianity.”
“We’ve waited for you for three thousand and ten.”
“Years or months or days? Since when?”
I shout a little louder than I intended,
And hope my new friend will not be offended.
“You’d call them years but we call then happenings.”
“It’s about the same measurement give or take a Saphering.”
I roll my eyes at the meaningless chatter,
Can’t help but be thinking of the Mad Hatter.
But still I am here listening to him.
Watching the sunlight gradually dim.
I suppose what he says must have some meaning,
After all I’m nowhere I know and I don’t think I’m dreaming.
“What is it you’ve waited so long for?”
“You, my dear, my flamingo, what more?”
“But clearly I really haven’t a clue,
Where I am or what it means I should do.
Your Queen, who is she? What should I say?
Is it really important I do it today?”
“Oh today is the Prophecy, salvation’s friend,
If you don’t speak to her now then I’m afraid it’s the end.”
“The end of me, or you, or what else?”
“The end is the end whichever detail you place.”
His face is morose and I feel myself quiver.
This is a point at which I really can’t dither.
“Just stand before her and tell her what you know.
The words will be as they’re written below.”
“Words written where and can I read them first?”
“No time to explain this is her Velirst.”
I look behind me and sure enough.
A two wheeled cart, broken and rough,
At the edges. But inside plush and cosy,
A darling girl with her cheeks all rosy.
She pulls up, steps down every bit the fairy Queen,
More silver and gold than you have ever seen.
I look for wings but there are none,
She appears just like me although with her dark hair done.
“Roguerfeld you called me here?”
Her voice is so quiet I strain my ear.
“Yes ma’am I have such urgent need of your audience.”
“Well what is it? I’m dining with His Honourable Radiance.”
Her whisper is impatient and I wonder at cruelty,
But then I am pushed forward to bow at the royalty.
“As you are time pushed I won’t ramble.”
“With your favour you know I’d never gamble.”
“Quite right, quite right so what is this?”
She turns up her nose as if to dismiss,
But she looks at the man and meets his black eye,
And suddenly she’s reddening, her eyes tearing to cry.
“Yes ma’am, oh yes this is the one.”
“It can’t be it can’t be; it is too young.”
“No I assure you I have followed every rule.
Standing before you is our General.”
I gasp and I gape but I stay fixed to my spot.
A general, a saviour a prophecy I am not.
But the Queen, so dewy, her porcelain skin,
Is bowing down to me and leaning in.
She grasps up my hand and I feel her cold touch,
She holds my hand and kneels as such,
A cosseted woman can.
While I wished that I had ran and ran.
It was too late now, I was already involved.
But with what and where I could not solve.

Isobel Part 5

 This is it so far but I wanted to hear your thoughts at this point...

She hadn’t considered that their grief together in one space could possibly be too much. She had thought that she could offer him some kind of protection but in fact she had only breeched her own securities. There was nothing left to give. When she came home and found his door shut she knew better than to knock, she could feel his mood as soon as she’d opened the front door. The washing up was done but the kitchen hadn’t been disturbed since, there was no trace of him throughout the house. She went to her bedroom to change with the vague notion of getting their mum there for back up. The dressing table was in disarray; nail varnish remover rolled to a stop by the wall, moisturiser balanced on its side. Her three framed photographs were knocked flat and as she leant in to pick them up she noticed that one wasn’t there at all. It was impossible to stop the immediate flash of rage that went with her brother in her bedroom but she made herself sit down in the high-backed chair. She looked out at the nothing landscape of lit up city buildings until her eyes found the dark blankness that signified the sea; as she did the light pinpricks in the buildings windows blurred together and the flat expanse disappeared altogether. That picture was hers. It had belonged to her before he even knew Isobel and now he had taken that too. She got up silently and closed her own door. The sound of it meeting the frame disturbed Chris enough for him to recognise his sister’s presence in the house. He sighed and let the coldness seep into his mind, now he couldn’t help but feel the ache of holding the same position and he had to get up from the end of the bed. He ran his hands over his face and into his hair as if checking he had returned from an invisible state. He knew he had to leave the room. It was one of the reasons he had chosen to move into his sisters house; to make him move when all he would do is sit and stare. He went into the bathroom and splashed his face with warm water. He found his hands aching at the feel of the hot water and he ran them under the tap until it got too hot for him to bear.
    Janey heard him move and her anger left her replaced only with relief. If he could get up from that photograph then she would have to too. She redid her make up and got into jeans and three layers of thin jumpers. She turned all the lights on in the house and switched the heating on. She put the TV on and turned up the volume of the news and with that the house felt inhabited more by the living than by a ghost.
“Did you make your list?” She asked once she’d dished up a prawn stir fry.
“No. It was a crazy idea,”
“Not really.”
“I mean where do I start?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know or I’d do it.”
“Not one thing but just ideas about the bits of jobs that you like.”
“Like what?”
“People?”
“No I don’t like people.”
“Chris.”
“I don’t, not anymore.” She had thought his anger diminished but now she heard it biting at the edge of his comment.
“Okay.” She went on eating although Chris’ fork stayed in the middle of his half empty plate.
“Sorry.” She waved his apology away with a look that suggested it made no odds to her.
“About the picture.” He said quietly not looking at her. She blushed.
“I’d like it back.”
“Of course.” She picked up the plates and cleared them to the sink.
“I went to find some paper to make this list of yours and I saw it. I didn’t mean to take it or anything.”
“It’s okay.” She said finally.

Isobel Part 4

Sorry for the delay with this post.

There was nothing to hold onto; he groped for something but couldn’t know what. Like a desperate itch that he couldn’t locate it goaded him until he got up out of bed and into the darkness that failed to signal morning at this time of year. The purpose with which he’d taken the loss of his job had not left him as he’d feared, instead it nagged fiercely at him like acute pins and needles. He was unaccustomed to this hopeless, directionless energy.  He found it cold out of bed and put a hoodie on over his pyjamas. The pyjamas themselves being on in honour of being in his sisters home. He heard Janey get up and go into the bathroom while he ferreted around for socks and decided he’d see what she had in stock for breakfast before she got downstairs. He found what he had hoped; eggs, a packet of bacon, admittedly in the freezer but he’d manage, beans, tomatoes and an unopened packet of mushrooms. She must have recently shopped, a bad move on her part now that he’d taken up residence. He started the coffee maker and by the time she emerged in her disconcertingly smart office wear he was well on his way to starting the eggs. He presented her with coffee and only then recalled her mood first thing.
“What are you doing?” She muttered.
“Making breakfast.”
“Using a weeks food supply?”
“I’ll buy some more.”
“You don’t have a job.”
“I think I’ll manage to cover a few eggs.”
She raised her eyes to him and smiled.
“Smells good.” He dished it up and put both plates on the table. She began eating but he didn’t sit. He hovered around the kitchen putting saucepans to soak, removing the grill pan from the oven for the same treatment.
“Do that after. It’ll be cold.”
“Yeah.” He sat down and pushed a mushroom into the beans jiggling his foot.
“Restless today are we?” Asked Janey. That was the word for it he thought; restless.
“Hmm.” He cut up some bacon and chewed it quickly.
“I know I want to do something I just don’t know what.” He told her.
“Okay. Make a list.”
“Maybe.”
“Seriously. It’ll help. What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? Put everything on there.” He went on eating quietly thinking about what he would write if faced with a blank sheet of paper. No, he’d write it on his iphone much less accusatory than paper and already full of so much text. The sky had become a filthy grey outside although without the lights on in the small kitchen it’d be just as dark.
“I’ve got to go. Thanks for breakfast.” She moved her plate to the sink and he waved his hand to acknowledge that he’d wash up.
“Thanks. We’ll look over that list for some sensible ideas this evening.” She said as she left. He heard her moving about for another five minutes gathering herself together, cleaning her teeth before the front door banged shut.
“Sensible ideas.” The phrase echoed with him as he showered and dressed. Did that mean dull ideas? Like working for one of the other big financial companies here. He resolved to write an outlandish list. He found himself relishing the idea and he felt that this list needed more ceremony than a page of iphone notes. He made more coffee and washed up the breakfast dishes before he began to look for paper.  There wasn’t anywhere in the livingroom for paper to exist; a shelf housed the flatscreen TV and a bookshelf took up one wall apart from the sofa and empty coffee table that was all the furniture in there. He mooched back towards his bedroom but instead pushed the door opposite open. His sisters bedroom was just as sparse; double bed with the ratty old white throw he recognised from his Mum’s house when they’d been growing up, a pretty small wardrobe for a girl and a dressing table with the slightest clutter of girl type pots and bottles. There was a ceramic pot of greens and beiges containing pens and pencils which he took as a good sign. He crossed towards it and from this angle spied a low shelf unit stacked with notebooks and folders. A pad of A4 sat on top and he snatched it up lingering by the dressing table to select a pen for his task. He saw it and tried to pretend he hadn’t but even as his brain told him to take a pen, any pen and get out his body was sinking down onto the high backed chair. He reached out beyond the settlement of bottles and picked up the small silver frame knocking a larger one containing a photo of an old family holiday. His hands felt a little shaky but held steady as he studied the picture of his sister and Isobel. It was taken before he had met her when they had been in their first year at University. They were laughing, dressed up for a party but just by being there, at University, they radiated this expectation for the future but there wasn’t any for Isobel. She was only the past now.

Isobel Part 3

It was overwhelming to again get into a bed he had last slept in with Isobel. Of course the covers had been changed but the perverse thrill still tingled over him as he climbed in. The last time he had done this she had been alive; wasted and skinny and bald as anything but smiling after a good day. The last day she had spent with his family all together. The last time any of them had all been together unless you counted her funeral. Was she really there for her own funeral? The tears came as he knew they would but they were gentle, they fell without the wrenching effort that they sometimes required and he fell asleep with them on his face and soaking into his pillow.

“Chris, if it were up to me you’d be staying I can tell you. But the masters that be…”
“I understand, Erin.”
“Well that’s good of you ‘cause I bloody don’t.” His boss looked like she hadn’t slept and he felt touched that this could be because of him, because she had to deliver this news to him.
“Now I’ve got a few mates over at AmEx. Lets say have a month or two off and I’ll put in a word and see which department you can start in.” She looked at him over the bridge she had made with her hands.
“No, thank you.” He shook his head quickly and looked down.
“Really Chris I’m sorry to lose you. You’re an asset here…” She stopped when he guffawed and looked a little offended.
“I’m sorry. An asset? I get up and walk out. I do half my allocation, if that, on the days I’m here. A monkey could be trained to do my job.”
“I’m not judging you on the last few months. Only an…well it’d be pretty heartless for anyone to.”
“It’s a business.”
“Not for much longer if it treats it’s staff like this.” He was surprised by how real her anger was when he felt nothing at all. Strange considering how quick he’d been to get angry at anything before but now he couldn’t summon a flicker. In fact he felt a sort of relief. There was no choice now. He would have to begin again.
“Erin it’s been great working for you but I think this was the push I needed. If you don’t mind I won’t stay any longer. Thank you.” He got up and walked out closing the door on her protestations with a quick smile. There was no-one he particularly wanted to say goodbye to and as she’d caught him on his way in he had all of his personal effects slung across his body in a bag. He felt a fondness as he left the office for the last time. They had tried to look after him, to protect him. It’s just they had done the wrong thing. This is what he’d needed after all. As he walked through the city towards his flat an impulse took him and he dropped into his letting agent as he passed it insisting on speaking only to the manager.
“So you see I can’t pay you any more rent. I lost my girlfriend and my job. I suppose you’ll keep my deposit so I shan’t bother to clean the place for you.” The agent stammered and muttered about protocol and how he wouldn’t be able to get it past head office even though he himself saw no need to stick to the rules on this occasion. Chris found himself again getting up and walking out on a person trying to angle themselves onto his side.
“I’ll drop the keys through the letter box tonight.” He called over his shoulder as he left, still smiling.
 He rang Janey giggling as he journeyed on home.
“Guess what?”
“What?” She asked warily.
“I was sacked.” She drew in a sharp breath.
“Oh no. Oh Chris.”
“No. Stop. Don’t you think this was just the kick up the arse I needed? Now I can figure out what I want to do.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
‘You haven’t been…I mean you’re not…”
“I’m not drunk, no. I’m just on a high at the possibilities of life.”
“Good. How will you pay your rent?”
“I won’t.”
“I see.”
“I’m moving in with you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tonight.” She started laughing.
“Okay I’ll meet you at yours in an hour. Just don’t throw anything out yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just don’t okay. I’ll be there.” He hung up still grinning. His sisters job appeared to be about as flexible as his own, or as he thought his own had been. What was she on about throw things out? He would have to pack, yes but he didn’t have that much stuff. He really wasn’t a clothes man much to Isobel’s relief. It hit him as he unlocked the front door and his heart sank. She meant Isobel’s things. Of course he couldn’t move house with all of her things. He mooched into the bedroom not bothering to remove his bag or his jacket and sat on the floor. Janey found him sat with his back to the small Ikea wardrobe. She sat down next to him.
“All got a bit real?” She asked.
“I didn’t think. I mean I hadn’t realised about her stuff.”
“You mean getting rid of it?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t have to.” He looked at her and the hope that shone in his eyes made her want to cry. It was always like this. He hung on to every little bit of memory and as he alighted on it, for a moment, he actually thought he was getting her back. She had grown used to the thought process as she watched it cross his face. For today he would be happy knowing he could keep her clothes in boxes somewhere but in a few days or weeks he would have to go through them or let somebody else and yet again he’d have to come to terms with the loss of Isobel. Today, get through today she told herself. She wanted to get him to her place or to Mum and Dads. She hated leaving him on his own here but it was all he had wanted at first. She used to lie awake watching her phone terrified that he’d have just about too many and decide to follow Isobel. He’d threatened it many times to her. Although threaten wasn’t the word; he didn’t say it to provoke any particular response. He said it out of desperation and that was what had frightened her the most.
“So maybe I could very carefully pack Isobel’s things into boxes and we could store them at Mum and Dad’s for when you’re ready.” She held her breath unsure of which way this would go. Her brother furrowed his brow and them smiled.
“Yeah. Okay.” So while Chris sorted through his small kitchen and boxed away cds and dvds in the living room Janey meticulously folded and packed her best friends clothes. She hummed to herself and sang bits of songs she could remember. Upbeat songs, 80’s hair metal and Michael Jackson songs. So that she didn’t think about the shopping trip that had yielded the perfect pair of jeans, the jumper got for a £1 in a crazy London sale. She pretended she was a sales assistant in a shop making everything look as neat as possible. Making everything mean nothing. She didn’t grieve for Isobel in front of Chris. She made herself say her name to him no matter how much she thought she would cry, she never had yet. Isobel was Chris’s tragedy, his love, his world and she had learnt to share her a long time ago.

Isobel Part 2

There was a message from work on the answer phone. They begged in formal words to know he was okay. He deleted it. Perhaps he would go in tomorrow but at that moment the night was enough of a hurdle to get through, His first thought was alcohol but he had lost three months to it’s agonising stupor and he couldn’t go back to it. At first it numbed but then it pulled it’s cruel trick jack-knifing his chemical equilibrium. It made everything so much harder to bear. He turned on the television and cruised the mainstream channels for the local news. He heard some suited old man talking about the girl he had seen. He spoke of her having a family, friends, college. That girl who had nothing on top of that building had everything. The pictures were of the people in their winter coats who had prayed and begged and cried. In their feeling for that girl they poured out their grief at the world in general, at their cheated lives specifically. He wondered why they wept. It was a catharsis usually only world terror attacks and princesses dying brought about. As he watched it all he imagined that girls family and felt that heart squeezing unbearable loneliness he had lived with for so long now. But for once it wasn’t for him, for Isobel. It was for that girl’s mother. The woman who now had a ghost instead of a daughter; a haunted, shaken image that would confront her every moment, awake or asleep.
He was back outside and hurrying towards the train station before he’d made a decision. The train was quick and the movement stopped him from thinking at all. It created a repetition of images in his mind. His “safe” images of Isobel. The ones he had vetted for the more painful memories. The ones that made him feel a sort of settledness that may one day translate to his version of happiness. He hadn’t brought his key. Come to think of it he couldn’t remember where it was. It had been five months since he had crossed the threshold of this house. He had stood outside of it twice since then but been so blinded by the memories of him and Isobel leaving the warm love of this place that he had been unable to enter. Those times like this one were unannounced. He knocked this time without hesitation and waited for it to be answered. When a middle aged woman opened it neither of them spoke. It took her a second to understand what it meant to see him standing there. They looked at each other with an understanding that he appreciated more than anything at that moment. She wrapped her arms around him as if he was six years old and his tears fell just as readily.
“Oh come in.” She said through her own tears.
Once inside the familiar living room with its too hot snugness and fresh polished scent he felt tears to be uncomfortable and odd. He wiped them hastily from his cheeks and unfallen from his eyes. His mum must have felt the same because she had her back to him as she offered a cup of tea before hurrying off to the next room. He was glad of a few moments to be here alone. It suddenly seemed strange to him that he had felt so confronted by the idea of his parent’s home. The sofa had a new deep blue and purple embroidered throw over it but underneath he knew it’s once red velvet was a frayed pink, almost threadbare on the arms and on one patch at the top of the far right hand side. Jasper the fifteen year old, one-eyed cat he’d always had an uneasy relationship with snored on in a belligerent manner on top of an armchair near the fire. Nothing had changed. The anchors of his childhood had held. Perhaps that was what he couldn’t bear in those first three twilight months. It had angered him so much that the world walked past his window, that people on the television could be frivolous enough to still make Eastenders or news programmes about a population he would have gladly sacrificed for one more minute of Isobel’s company. This train of thought had led him in a more proactive mood to conclude that it was offensive to her memory that television still existed. He had thrown his own television out of his window. This was the ground floor of his flat. It did almost no damage but he had been satisfied by the swift, contained activity of removing it from the table and manoevering to the sill before letting go. Afterward he had drawn the curtain and returned to the sofa to stare at the empty space in front of his wall. It made him feel exactly the same as the television had. Angry. By this time the familiar malaise had returned so he had felt no need to take his anger out on the wall, the space or anything else.
The tea spilled slightly as his mum placed it on the coaster in front of him on the coffee table. He looked up slowly and met her eyes.
“Sorry…”
“I’m…”  they both began. They smiled. She moved closer and sat on the sofa next to him.
“I understand. I mean I understood why you didn’t want to…to be here…or…”
She trailed off but he nodded. He had never doubted that she would but he still knew what it must have felt for her to be so cut out of his grief.
“Did you see that girl? On the news?” He asked.
“The one who jumped?”
He nodded again.
“Yes. Awful, isn’t it?”
“I saw her.” She looked a little uncomprehending as if he was repeating the fact that he had seen her on the telly.
“I saw her jump. In town, I was on my lunch break.” It felt very important that he explain all of this to his mum.
“I saw her standing up there and I willed her not to. I knew she would though so I turned away. I didn’t want to see. I wanted to pretend she had lived but I heard everyone shout and scream and I knew she had jumped. Mum I thought about her parents and I thought about you”. He stopped abruptly. He had gabbled like a child with no punctuation and none of his casual, lyrical sarcasm. His mum hugged him.
“How have you been?” She asked.
“Drunk”. He looked up at her with a wry smile.
“Your sister told us about that.” He raised an eyebrow,
“So you know that I was quite the late night entertainer in my street for a while?”
“If I didn’t I do now”. She returned his eyebrow raise exactly.
“Yeah. I’m okay. I went back to work a few weeks ago.” He didn’t tell her that he only went when he felt like it and frequently wandered off mid-day never to return.
“How is it?”
“As mind-numbing as ever. Should have thought of that avenue before I took the booze route. Generally less accidental indecent exposure”. To her credit his mum laughed. A proper laugh. He felt a real smile playing on his face.
“You didn’t? Oh no. I don’t want to know about it.” He laughed despite himself.
“Mum that was a degrading and humiliating episode in my pain filled existence.” The dramatic delivery made her laugh even more until she was crying and grabbing at intakes of breath. The cat opened his one eye and jumped from the top of the chair disapprovingly. It left the room with a shake of his fur and a disgusted arch to his back. It felt so good to be laughing with his mum. To be laughing at all. His humour to anybody before had just been pitiful, eliciting an embarrassed titter at best. Here was the woman who felt his pain most accurately hooting at the idea of his desperate behaviour.
“I dread to think of the state of your flat.” His Mum commented after they’d taken a few calming sips of their tea and settled back into their respective ends of the sofa.
“Oh you’d shudder.” He smiled.
“Why don’t you stay here this evening?” He began to shake his head and stopped himself.
“Do you think Jasper’d approve?” He asked shyly.
“Oh of course not.”
“In that case yeah, I think I will.” He wondered if it were some sort of strange shifting of balance that made him not want to go home. Now he had conquered his demons here they had moved into his flat while he wasn’t looking. More like the prospect of clean sheets and actual breakfast in the morning looked like a better bet this side of nine p.m. There was a loud thump overhead followed by the quick creak of the stairs before his Dad appeared at the door.
“Hello.” He offered as if Chris had just arrived.
“Hi Dad.”
“Did you see that terrible thing on the news? That girl? Just jumped. Just like that.”
“Chris was there. He saw her.” His Mum interjected.
“Oh no. You didn’t son?”
“I didn’t see her jump. I left before then. I could tell she was going to.” His Dad tutted and shook his head.
“Want a beer Chris? Lainey?” Chris agreed with a quick ‘yep’ and a nod while his mother pursed her lips thoughtfully before saying ‘go on then.’ His Dad brought the beer in glasses for himself and Elaine but gave Chris the bottle alone. He was careful to be attuned to how people liked their drinks served and both of his children preferred their beer straight from the bottle, although not so with a can he had noticed. If it were a beer in a can he would have decanted Chris’s too.
“Chris is staying tonight.”
“Good idea.” His Dad replied.
“How’s work?” His Dad offered after a pause in which he tasted and savoured his first sip of the beer.
“Dull.” Chris replied. His Dad just nodded and Chris suspected he’d really been trying to find out if Chris went to work at all.
“Why don’t you move on from there?” His Mum offered.
“Don’t you sound like Janey.”
“Well.” His Mum looked sheepish so he knew that his sister and her had been discussing the subject.
 “I don’t know. Maybe I will do something else. Just as soon as I figure out what.” The subject changed and changed again and Elaine couldn’t find a way back so he knew he was safe. Too much had changed already. He couldn’t give up his desk or the trained-monkey level of programming he pushed through. It wasn’t the money. The money was awful. But they let him walk out at one and not come back for three days. They let him sit undisturbed for hours while he stared motionless at the screen. They let him come in in yesterdays clothes smelling of booze on the days when he couldn’t be on his own for a second longer. Today he felt good but he knew he wasn’t yet past any of that. Only one beer he told himself, just one.

Isobel Part 1

Something I've been working on out here. There's a few more installments any comments or ideas welcome.  

He watched her, waiting for her to fall. The world screamed up at her, screamed on and on. She could feel it pulling her. Their very tongues stretching out to hook her limbs. Closer and closer to the edge she inched under their force. There she could see them all staged below her in a parody of human caring. Woman shook their heads and cowered into men’s chests. She wondered if they were acting for some film or if they just wanted an excuse for an extra hour off of work. Voices drifted individually to her now but she found them more difficult to understand than the collective swell that had been aimed at her before. She took one more step, the last one that could still hit solid concrete without travelling 14 floors first. Here on the very, very edge all seemed to go quiet. She felt the breeze gliding past her inviting her to join it, to fly and be free. She lifted her eyes towards the horizon and there she could see her destination in creamy blue. The crowd below stilled itself in a collective movement and for a few seconds the world stopped in mourning of something that was yet to happen. Glancing down her movement seemed to be the theatre of humanity. A figure shook himself into life and she focused on him, his dark jacketed back retreating away from her. He looked back for a long time with his head turned over his shoulder. She felt glued by his stare, it was more real than anything that she had ever felt. He broke away first and from her great vantage point she saw a tear as cold as ice fall leaving a permanent shatter in that dome of humanity that she saw concaved below her. There he had given her a way in, a sign of reality in the group hysteria of falsehood. As he walked away, her hero, she levelled her eyes with the horizon and, sure of her self now, took her final step.

From the moment he saw her look up at the clouds he knew she was jumping and he couldn’t watch her do that. A long morning at work had found him strolling the streets of Brighton. He wasn’t really hungry, never seemed to be these days but the gentle winter sunshine was some sort of tonic to him. He’d found himself in the crowd before he’d seen it. He found it harder to move around people than on the previous streets. Dark coat clad people were stood too still in his path. He had looked up just enough to see their faces. It had been a point not to make any more human contact than he had to since Isobel had died but now his natural instinct to understand the surreal image around him forced him beyond his grief. The look on their faces was terrifying. These people were really frightened of something. He stopped feeling their pain and wanting to identify with it. It seemed to him that while they couldn’t join him in his lost shadow he could easily fit their emotion into that gap in his body. He followed their gaze up not able to understand what they could be agonising over since hey hadn’t known Isobel.
There was the girl. Standing on top of a horrid brown office block. She was clear in her distance. Blonde and wearing nothing. The wind was behind her and blew her long hair on to her body, covering and uncovering her breasts with each breeze. The people around spoke in disbelief but he found it easy to believe and understood exactly what she was doing. She was living before she died. He wandered whether she would die here and now today. He had doubted it for that moment. She surely would feel that sudden shock that life was worth more than we are. That realization that had coursed through his veins three weeks after Isobel’s death.  Only when you are faced with the fragility of your own existence does the desire to keep living kick in. He hadn’t understood why. The grief for Isobel was still as strong as ever and he had no idea how he could continue to be without her to confirm him. But from that moment he had slipped back into the main stream. He had managed work, the occasional meal and to meet his friends or family once a week.
He looked up with all of the others but he felt no need to scream as they did, to beg her not to jump. Maybe she had no intention to fall today. He knew that if she did she would barely hear the cries of the world to stop her, after all what was a collective conscious to one that could not understand her own? She took her step to the edge and he listened to the individual quiet pleas for her safety. Among him a few people dropped to their knees and in whispered desperation prayed for her soul. Every single person wanted their words to make that difference but did they think that this young, pretty girl had no-one to beg for her survival but them? He realised that then and there they believed that. They could be the one that mattered to her. Above her mother? Father? Best friend? Sister? He turned to go, pushing his way through the morbid crowd. His throat was being choked and he couldn’t resist the need to turn one more time. To see her perfect image of innocence, that image of beauty that was about to haunt these people’s minds forever. His gaze was caught by something above the heads of these people and he allowed himself to believe for one reckless minute that he could stop her smashing her wasted life on a city pavement in that next moment. It was the same crazy hopelessness that had made him believe he could save Isobel and letting a tear fall openly he turned away. His third footstep hit the floor as soon as the screaming began. He pushed harder against the dark, warm bodies and broke into a run. He ran until he could hear the cries of “oh god”, “no” , “fuck” …As if any of these utterances of language could describe the tragedy of a girl who hadn’t even found a way to interpret life giving up on it. Maybe she was never destined to make any sense of it. Maybe she was saving herself some kind of prolonged agony but somehow he felt that she had made her decision to crush her soul within her body without even knowing who her soul was. He ran until he was alone in some random back streets and here he collapsed against a shuttered door way and sobbed against the cold metal and his indifferent leather jacket. Sobbing about a girl who was Isobel being dragged to her death by a monster living on the inside of her.