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...

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.

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.