Apothecarium

Do you ever wonder what life would be like if it was possible to put our feelings into bottles? To distil emotion. To be able to carry them outside of ourselves and experience them as intensely as we choose. What would that be like?

Imagine that, instead of writing a love letter, you could simply spill a drop or two of your love on to the paper. That, on opening that envelope, the recipient would experience all the colour and warmth and musical cadences of your feelings that words could never put across. Imagine that.

But imagine too, what someone with a pitcher full of hatred and anger could do. Imagine dousing someone in emotions so strong and so bitterly dark that they make you feel physically sick. Drowning someone in fury, making them choke on the fumes of greed and jealousy. Imagine the harm it could do.

The innocent happiness of children, the frustrations and fears of parents. The ignorant hatred and misguided anger of those who intentionally harm others. The quiet joy of creating something truly unique, and the fierce blazes of triumph when goals are met and limits surpassed. So many colours and scents and textures arrayed in bottles and jars.

Do you understand the opportunities?

Do you understand the risks?

Will you step forward and take a look at my wares?

I see you already have your eye on one.

Yes, I think some curiosity is just right for you...

Choke

How did this happen?

You already know the answer to that. A message you were never meant to receive. A call that never connected. You can see all of the pieces, and try as you might, you can’t stop them from fitting together.

And it hurts. It hurts like hell.

Even if you can tell yourself that it shouldn’t have happened the way it did, it doesn’t change the fact that it did happen. Maybe that’s what hurts the most. That no matter if the mistake was made or not, the outcome would still be the same. Someone you cared about would still be dead and there would never be a single damn thing you could have done about it.

But he did send the message to you, and you got it too late, and when you tried to call, there was no one left to answer.

When you found out what happened, it was impossible to process. You didn’t see it happen. The call never went through; it would be so easy to pretend it wasn’t real. But the message was still there, sitting in your phone inbox. ‘Help me, come get me.’ But it said ‘Dad.’ It was sent to the wrong number, it wasn’t meant to be for you. It wasn’t meant to be your responsibility, but now it is and you failed. You have to accept that it is real, and there will always be the thought that maybe there was something you could have done that you didn't and you will have to live with that every. Single. Day.

And all of this for the one person you just wanted to leave you alone.

Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you?

And now you can choke on it.

Six AM in Smoke

It’s six in the morning and there’s an empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and a dead woman on the floor. There’s a knife in your hand too, but you didn’t put it there. You were not responsible for this.

Your fingers are limp around the handle, letting it merely lie in your palm. You cannot recall why it is there, or why you are allowing it to stay there, or if any of that really matters because as far as you can tell from here the dead woman was clearly shot instead of stabbed.

You exhale the mouthful of smoke you were holding. The cigarette in your fingers has burned down almost to nothing, but you take another pull on it anyway. You are unsure of many things; where you are, who this dead woman was, why you are holding a seemingly unrelated knife and whether there will be any more cigarettes after this one is finished.

The empty bottle of whiskey seems less important. You were never a fan of whiskey.

Dimly, you become aware of the sound of sirens somewhere outside. It seems an appropriate sound until you realise that it is moving away from you, not towards. Silence settles back over the room and you exhale another cloud of smoke. The cigarette finally falls apart into warm ash that coats your fingers. You continue staring at the ceiling.

Somehow, you know you should be feeling more than this. Sluggish memories of the time before are surfacing, but they are lacking in the appropriate emotions. You do not remember how or when you got here, but that this is a cheap motel on the outskirts of a city that you don’t know. You recall that this knife you are holding was used to cut the phone line in this room, but you don’t know who used it, or why. You don't know what happened to the gun that must have been there. You don’t know why you are inside this room, how you got here, or why you are still alive while that other woman is dead.

Perhaps it is to do with that needle that’s lying on the nightstand next to the bottle. Yes, perhaps that’s the reason you don’t remember, and the reason that all you really know for certain is that there is an empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand, a dead woman on the floor, and a knife and a pile of ashes in your hands.

Marionette Wonderland

It is different for everyone.

For some, it is simple. Cold logic and hard facts come together as flat steel walls. Everything is ordered neatly and smoothly beneath their fingertips. It always makes sense, it always fits. There are no cracks, no gaps, only more smooth edges where the pattern can be continued as more logic and facts are added to the machine.

For others, their minds are like marionettes. Fragments suspended on strings and hanging in liquid darkness. Pulled this way and that. Half in control, half controlled by whims and follies and dreams. It may make sense when you follow a string to its end, but sometimes, it is better when it makes no sense at all. When you allow yourself to drown in your own mind.

And when you walk through Wonderland, you start to feel the strings. Attached to your arms, your legs, to every finger on your hands and wound around your neck. Who is in control here? Are you moving the strings, or are the strings moving you? You raise your arm, look at your hand. The strings hang slack, and you pull-

No, they told you to stop that. It isn’t Wonderland. It’s not real. There are no strings. There are no strings and no eyes and teeth that flash and grin in the dark. Return to the machine. Put the pieces of the puzzle back together. Remember, if they don't fit together, they won't stay. Put the red and black into their patterns, colour and shade on white backgrounds in perfectly ordered columns of numbers and ranks.

Relax. Focus, just like they told you. That isn’t a string around your neck, there is nothing tied to your hands at all. It isn’t dark here, you can see perfectly clearly. But then why can you still hear that voice at the back of your mind? That seductive purr and the ticking of clocks and suddenly you understand that gravity and sanity are linked so very intrinsically. 

After all, what difference is there between falling down the rabbit hole, and falling down a flight of stairs? All it takes... is one... little... step...

Radio Silence

Dead air.

That's what it feels like now. No. No, that's not right. That's what it always was, right from the start, in varying degrees. Just dead air. Static. Radio silence.

But it was alright, for a while. Those glorious bursts of noise; sparks of conversation, feelings, so close, so intimate that they seemed to glow. They made you happy. They made you feel safe, wanted. You lived for that. But it didn't stop the static flooding in. Too much white noise, even among the sparks. You ignored it, pushed it away. You tried so hard to convince yourself that it was alright.

It wasn't. Too much static seeping in for too long. The dead air grew heavy; it started pressing down on you. Too long spent craving those dwindling sparks. Outside noise started feeding in. Too much for you to bear. The silence growing heavier with each passing day as you were forced to listen to all that wonderful, painful noise.

Finally, you couldn't take it any longer. You broke through the silence; you finally made contact. But it was too late. It was too late and you couldn't maintain it. Instead, the silence grew heavier. It crushed you. Too late you realised it, and even though you tried so hard to keep that fleeting connection, it was overwhelmed by the static. Too much for too long. Too little, too late.

More dead air. It's getting harder and harder to hear anything now. The neverending buzz of the static. Noise still feeds in from the outside, familiar and otherwise. It doesn't matter, and it does matter. You're torn between listening and trying to tune it out. It hurts to hear it, but sometimes the silence is just too heavy to bear. It's starting to get hard to tell the difference. It's painful either way, the differences between the pains subtle and indistinct.

Maybe it's been so long now that static is all you can deal with. It feels safe there somehow. It hurts, but it hurts less than opening the channel. Letting all of the noise flood in. However wonderful it may be, you're terrified of it. Too many sounds blending together; beautiful, hideous, tantalising, unbearable noise.

So you hide in the static. You breathe the dead air.

You wish it had been different.

You wish it had been better.

Could you have changed it?

In the end, it could have been your fault. You let the static continue. You didn't break through in time.

Would it have changed anything if you had?

It doesn't really matter now. It's over. Done. Dead air is all that lies in between you.

It ends the way it probably began.

Träumer

I’ve started to hate dreaming.

I dream about dark rooms and cages made of rose vines. Where the air feels like syrup as I breathe and leaves the taste of poison on my tongue, heavy and bitter and dark. Where the tips of thorns graze my skin; feather-light but still enough to draw beads of blood. I am made of glass in those dreams. I am pulled in a dozen different directions. I am lost. I am broken. I am drowning in the dark and the scent of caramel and sweet, suffocating smoke.

I dream about bright lights and castles made of crystal. Where I am falling from impossibly high towers and balconies. Where there are courtiers and jesters and all manner of delightful monsters and I am not sure if I am one of them or something else entirely. I am trapped in mirrors in those dreams. I am forced to run just to stand still. I am confused. I am falling. I am losing myself in dances and impossible colours and beautiful, terrifying eyes.

I dream about glass walls and empty corridors. Where there are clocks surrounding me and time is moving too fast and too slowly all at once. Where I am chased by indistinct shapes with jewels for eyes and teeth and I have nowhere to run to. I am falling apart into pieces of clockwork and porcelain in those dreams. I am terrified. I am dying. I am feeling my legs start to fail me and forgetting how to breathe and I am unable to stop even for a moment.

So instead I lie awake and restless and too aware of the sound of my own breathing and the rise and fall of my chest. And then I am in a darkened room with a cage of rose vines, and I realise that it has started all over again.

Sugar and String

It started with a sugar mouse. Nothing complicated. Just a sugar mouse in a little brown paper bag and endless amusement that you could actually make something like that out of sugar and a piece of string.

After she finished it, she tied the piece of string around her pinkie finger and wore it for the rest of the day, just because.

From then on, she’d buy herself a sugar mouse every week. It wasn’t something she could explain, but it was important somehow. Something simple she could rely on. There would always be a sugar mouse on a Friday afternoon, no matter what else might happen.

If something good happened, it was a celebration. If something bad happened, it was something to remind her that there would always be good things left for her, even if it was as simple as some sugar and a piece of string.

“Sometimes it’s the little things that get you,” her father had said once. Looking at her weekly sugar mouse in its paper bag made her believe that. Even if it was simple, it was something. It was important.

The shopkeeper always made sure to keep one aside for her if it looked like they might run out. He always made sure it was a different colour every week, and she was always grateful for that, even though they both knew that she liked the white ones best.

“It’s not as though they taste any different,” she’d say. “But the white ones are best, I think. Sugar’s meant to be that colour.”

The shop closed the day before her eighteenth birthday.

The last day was a Thursday, so she had to get her last sugar mouse a day early. It was an unsettling break in her simple routine, but it seemed fitting somehow. The shopkeeper didn’t seem surprised. He simply slid a sugar mouse into a paper bag and twisted it closed like he always did.

“I saved a white one for you; I know how much you like them.” She managed to smile for him.

“I suppose I’ll have to find something else to be my reminder of all the good things. I’ve been relying on my sugar mice all this time; it’ll be hard to find something to match that.”

“Maybe you should try making them yourself,” the shopkeeper said.

She took her sugar mouse out of its bag and looked at it for a moment.

“Do you think I could?”

“I think you could do anything you set your mind to, and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else who’s given sugar mice twelve years of attention.”

She left the shop with her white sugar mouse, and a bag containing a recipe and some moulding tins.

After she finished the mouse, she tied the string around her pinkie finger, and wore it for the rest of the day. Just because.

Pierrot

“You should smile.”

Whenever she was feeling sad or lonely, somehow, there he’d be, and that’s what he would say to her. And it always worked, even if it was only a little twitch at the corner of her mouth at the familiarity of the words. But that was enough; it was still a smile to him.

“That’s better,” he’d say. “Now, see if you can do it like this!” And he’d stretch his mouth into a grin so wide that she was sure it must hurt his face, using his fingers to push it out as far as it would go, until she could do nothing but dissolve into giggles at the sheer ridiculousness of it.

He said he liked it best when she laughed like that.

~*~

The day he learned to juggle, he rushed to show her. When she laughed and applauded him, his grin stretched ever wider.

“Now I have something else to make you smile,” he said, and she couldn’t help but match his grin as he tossed the three juggling balls even higher in the air.

~*~

“What happened?” She blinked back her tears and shook her head.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” He tilted her face up and looked her in the eye. “You aren’t smiling anymore.”

“What difference does that make?” she asked. His expression seemed determined and she didn’t understand the way he was staring at her, the other layer to his gaze.

“Because as long as you can smile, I know that you’re alright. Now come here, I’ve got a new trick to show you.”

And she let him take her hand and pull her to her feet and lead her away from that place. When she asked him again why her smile mattered so much, he told her that her smile was a beautiful thing, and that beautiful things shouldn’t be hidden away. She told him that it wasn’t nice to lie, even to make a friend feel better, and he smiled and told her that he had never lied to her.

At those words, she started to cry again.

~*~

He taught her how to walk a tightrope in his back garden, holding her arms out at right angles as she wobbled along between the two small poles.

“I don’t understand how you manage this,” she’d laughed as he stopped her from falling yet again.

“It keeps you smiling, doesn’t it?” he said simply. He walked along it after she finally gave up, and she was sure that he fell off on purpose, but she would have laughed either way.

“But you shouldn’t hurt yourself just to make me happy you know. Wouldn’t that make me the worst kind of friend?”

He only laughed as he dusted himself off, and she wondered, if he could laugh at his own hurt like that, how could she know if his smile was genuine?

~*~

“Why didn’t you say anything?” He didn’t meet her eyes until she made him, her fingers pulling at his face until he finally met her gaze. He was still trying to smile, but when he saw that there were tears in her eyes again, it slipped away.

“It didn’t matter, as long as you were happy.” She shook her head angrily and tightened her grip around his wrist with its myriad scars and marks.

“How could I be happy about something like this? Why should I have been happy when you were hurting so much?”

“Making you happy made it easier. Seeing your smile made it better.” She stared at him, speechless, before pulling him to her, her cheek against his hair.

“Don’t pretend anymore,” she told him. “From now on, if you’re sad, then cry. If you’re hurt, be in pain. Share it with me. I’ll cry for you if I have to.” She forced a small smile onto her face. “And then, when you smile, I can really believe it.”

She stood up and brushed his hair away from his face and smiled for him one more time.

"No more Pierrot, okay?" He caught and held her hand against his face for a moment, and his smile returned.

“Okay.”

Keep It For Me

The first time he saw her, she was sitting on a dead tree that was half submerged in the lake.

“I think it’s sad, don’t you?” she had asked. “When I saw it sitting alone out here, I thought I should sit with it. Nothing should just be forgotten.”

He said nothing. She just shook her head and turned her gaze back out across the water. He watched the ripples spreading outwards from where her feet touched the surface.

He heard his heart beat.

~*~

The second time he saw her, she was swinging her legs on top of an old stone wall and she gave him a photograph she’d taken of a bicycle.

“I found it by the roadside. I think whoever owned it must have loved that bicycle, don’t you?” He said nothing. He handed the picture back to her.

She took it and looked at him with sad eyes that he didn’t really understand.

“I hope they loved it. I think it’s sad to be thrown away without at least being loved first.”

He watched as she tucked the photograph into her pocket and then walked away from him along the top of the stone wall.

He felt himself take a breath.

~*~

The third time he saw her, she was standing in the darkness and staring at the sky.

“I used to be so scared of the dark. It felt like being alone, being small and alone with no one standing beside you.”

He said nothing. She closed her eyes and spread her arms.

“I don’t think I’m so afraid of being alone anymore. I think if you’re alone for long enough, you get used to it. You learn to stand beside yourself.”

He thought he heard her start to cry.

“I just hope I don’t end up alone like that tree in the lake. I hope no one throws me away like the bicycle.”

He watched her run away into the darkness until his eyes strained with trying to see her.

He felt himself start to move.

~*~

The fourth time he saw her, she was sitting on a rock with a paper aeroplane in her hands.

“I thought that maybe I could write my feelings down and let them go, and maybe that would make things easier. But they won’t go in the right direction. They just end up crumpled on the ground.”

He said nothing. He took the aeroplane from her and smoothed it out so that he could read what was written on it. Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket and watched her smile.

“I’m glad that they reached someone. I’m glad that someone will look after them for a little while.”

He watched as she stood up and turned to go.

He felt himself grab her hand.