Just a worm
Trying to write more every day, and hoping to write for many more.
Just a worm
Trying to write more every day, and hoping to write for many more.
Trying to write more every day, and hoping to write for many more.
Trying to write more every day, and hoping to write for many more.
Funny how someone can be more than a person But a colour too, the sort that warms and grows And brings about these daily smiles. When life comes undone They know the stitches, how to sew Not just a fixer but a maker aswell. They outline a life and you’re there too Part of the picture Sketched and carefully painted. They give it movement This art of ours And we live there together.
I have a spot Not our usual one No it’s somewhere you’d never think To look You might find the clues in my face If you pay attention For more than one wasted night If you make your tracings Reveal my footprints that drag Because I’m tired of hiding And I’d rather be found now Clinging to a branch or stuffed in a box Please figure it all out I’m getting bored and lost.
“I love you, Kevin! I think I’ll always love you, no matter what happens!” David shouted up at Kevin who was now leaning over his balcony to see who was making such a obnoxious declaration at four in the morning.
“David? What the fuck are you doing?” Kevin said, the reply coming out as a stifled yell as to not alert his neighbours to the bizarre scene.
“I’ve come to declare my love to you! I’ve been hiding the real me for too long now, and I’m tired of pretending!” His voice was louder now and carrying to the other flats above, Kevin was sure of it.
“Yeah, okay, but what did you mean when you said ‘no matter what happens’?”
“What?”
“You said ‘no matter what happens’ and, I dunno, it sounded kind of ominous, y’know?”
“Well, I meant broadly speaking, like, no matter what happens in our lives, I’ll be there for you - yeah?”
“Yeah okay I get it but, David, mate we hardly know each other and if I’m honest it’s kind of fucking mental that you’re here right now and doing this. I literally met you last month at work and we’ve been for one beer…and even then I think that was just a work thing?” Kevin said, his eyes adjusting to the darkness outside so that he could see David clearly now. Clearly holding a bouquet of sad flowers in one hand, and a dripping kitchen knife in the other.
He spoke slowly, as if talking to a possibly feral dog, “David, sorry to have to ask, mate, but is that a bloody knife in your hand?”
“Yeah.” David said, plainly and without any apparent acknowledgment of the situation at hand.
“Right…well have you hurt yourself?”
“Nah, I may have hurt someone else though.”
“Someone else?”
“Yeah, namely the doorman for your building.”
“Fucking hell! You stabbed Tony? What the fuck?” Kevin exclaimed, wanting to pull away from his balcony and into the safety of his flat, but compelled, by the bizarreness of the situation, to stay.
David’s voice was a bit quieter now, and Kevin had to strain to hear him.
“He wouldn’t let me in to say hi to you and deliver these,” he waved the smashed flowers around “and so I did him in.” David said, in the same tone that you might tell someone that you’d jus taken the bins out.
Kevin, against his better judgment, asked, “Did him in?” He was reaching for his phone now.
“Yeah, did him in, gave him a few stabs, sliced him up a few times - whatever you wanna call it! Anyway, that’s not important right now! What’s important is that you finally know how I feel!”
“I’m calling the police, David, you’re not well and I think you need help. Please just stay where you are!” Kevin shouted with as much confidence as he could muster.
David looked up at him for a moment, then to his left and right, eyeing up the whole street before turning his attention back to him. He had an expression, not sad, not even angry from what Kevin could see - he looked disappointed. David shrugged and dropped the knife with a clatter.
“Fuck this, you’re just like the others, always calling the police. Prick.” He said, and then launched into a brisk jog, striding down the street as if resuming an early morning run. As he disappeared from view, Kevin stood on his balcony, mouth slightly hanging open, phone pressed to his ear and the dial tone ringing out into the night.
From somewhere above him a voice called out.
“Close your fucking window, I’m trying to sleep! Who makes a call at this time of the morning?!”
Wake up sir Come quickly To our fair city To the adorned square Where you fought your last battle And gave so dearly
They have made monuments to you sir Look how the sun catches your cheek They tell me it’s gold Brought from overseas And listen to their songs there How your name carries
This does not please you sir To war and conquer and be left with peace But that is how it must always be Do not cry for the slaughtered cow To mourn would be to waste the gift Of not knowing the pain hunger brings
So I ask of you sir Please dry your tarnished cheeks Go to those people The many who worship us few And lull them as you would your child With promises of a dream you once had.
I’m the guy who does the pictures on cigarette packs Of fathers blowing smoke in their kids’ faces And sometimes lungs all tarred and black This job has me going some wonderful places To morgues and to the doctors Or some small-town dentist To gawp at the teeth of a washed-up rocker Or look at some organs with the mortician’s apprentice.
I’m the guy who gives you the warning In big capitals like I’m right there shouting When you take a drag between your yawning Not picking up what I’m spouting This will kill you unless you’re lucky And you might dodge the mouth cancer Which you will - because you’re rather plucky The real deal, not like the others, a real chancer.
I’m the guy who smokes now and again Socially of course, not like a reclusive smokestack Blowing smog through my empty windowpane No I much prefer in the beer garden out the back Of the musty pub down the road My little respite from the daily graft An old shoulder that takes the load Of my tireless art, my unsung craft.
I searched for the culprit of those steps that lead so neatly to that retreating tide. Each a stamp that betrayed it, the drowned thing that visited our world. I reached into my jacket pocket and fingered the the grip of the pistol that weighed heavily there. Could I do the deed if given the chance? Kill that thing that wrought such evil upon my family?
The questions were many that passed through my mind, as the water soaked through my shoes, and all went unanswered. All I could focus on was the sound of the waves lapping against the sun like a hungry tongue. The sound which had once brought such calm to me now filled me with a building dread. My ears twinged at each irregularity in that sound, each break of the surf suggesting an emergence, a return of the beast.
When it eventually surfaced I almost didn’t see it. The sun had begun to set, and the waters surface had become confused by the evening sky above it. It was unmistakable now though, as it marched grimly towards me through the roiling waves. Its eyes locked on me like two great moons, shining their cold light on my face. I could smell it now, a putrid musk of dead and rotten things, and then I heard it, drawing whistling breathes into its many gills. I watched in frozen horror as it approached, webbed hang outstretched and grasping.
I hadn’t felt myself pull out the pistol and now I was peering down the sights at the thing and its searching hand. I squeezed the trigger.
One shot left its chamber and met its target - its scaly chest, glancing off of the shimmering carapace.
Another clipped the fin protruding from its head, sending a spout of black blood behind it.
The last missed its mark and flew clear of it and into the sea foam behind.
I didn’t have a chance to catch my breath before it lunged at me, pushing me down with its immense weight and pressing my head beneath the water. Salt water washed down my throat and burned in my lungs and as much as I struggled, the burden of its monstrous form lay heavy on me. I sank deeper into the wet sand and in a moment of morbid clarity, I thought it a fitting burial.
I wondered if they would find my body, or if I would be pulled out to sea by the tide like everything else. Nevermind, It’s over now.
Hamster shuffled up to the podium and peered over it to look at the sparse audience that had gathered. Rabbit was nursing a cloudy pint in one paw, and loosely holding a smouldering cigar in the other – making small efforts now and then to look over at the stage to feign interest. Goldfish, who had just been wheeled into the auditorium in her glass bowl, was swimming in anxious circles, stopping only to let out a gulping sigh. Snake was coiled round a bag of nuts, the dark slits of their eyes fixed on the clock on the wall.
Cat was the only one who seemed interested, her ears turned towards the podium where Hamster stood leafing through a stack of papers, his pink nose crinkling as he eyed certain pages. His searching hands came to rest on one of the papers, and he plucked it from the stack before clearing his throat.
“Thank you all for coming to this weeks Pet Peeves assembly! I know it is quite a hassle for some of you to get here, especially those of us with little ones – congratulations on the litter Rabbit!” He said, smiling over at Rabbit who just shrugged and took another swig from his pint and a languid drag from his cigar.
After pausing to wait in vain for a response from Rabbit, hamster continued, “Anyhow, let us get straight to business. I have the write up here from some of your letters that came in last week – and let me tell you we have some very alarming points to cover tonight. Firstly, we have a complaint here from Snake about their owner, a little boy – Timmy is it?” Snake hissed in confirmation, “yes well, Snake, it says here that Timmy has been taunting you?”
“Yesss” Snake hissed, eyes narrowing from the mere mention of the boy’s name.
“May I ask…taunting you how, exactly?” Hamster said.
“He leaves the lid off my enclosure sometimes…and sometimes I want to eat him. I’ve only sized him up a few times, and all I’ll say is that I could definitely eat that boy if it came to it.”
“If it came to it?”
“Yes, if he continues to taunt me.”
“Right, have you considered, Snake, that maybe the boy is a little forgetful in his duties as an owner? I don’t think Timmy is challenging you to eat him, wouldn’t you say that is a bit of a stretch?”
A sly grin spread across Snake’s mouth, “The only stretch is the one I’ll be doing to get my jaw ready to unhinge for that little–” “Okay I hear you loud and clear, Snake!” interrupted Hamster, searching his notes hurriedly for the next entry. He turned to Cat, who was the nearest to him in the audience, and gestured to her as he adjusted his reading glasses.
“This is from, Cat, who has written in to raise an issue regarding food shortages in her house, and she has requested me to open this up to the club to hear of any similar experiences?” Hamster said, looking from one disinterested face to the other in the crowd.
A few murmurs, but not much else. Cat sighed quietly and gingerly preened the fur on her shoulder, stopping after a few licks to speak.
“It’s quite awful,” she took a moment to gaze expectantly behind her at the others, “you see they feed me in the mornings, but even then, I have to wait for them to wake up, which is sometimes as late as 6am!
“And you wouldn’t believe how slowly the hours go by before I even catch a whiff of lunch, sometimes it feels like bloody weeks, I tell you! And yes, dinner does come eventually but oh do they make me beg for it. They’ll have me meowing and begging like some common alley cat looking for scraps. Well, this is why I have concluded that there simply must be a global food shortage of some sort, if I were to give them the benefit of the doubt that is.”
She was looking at Hamster now, expecting some sort of affirmation he supposed, but while she had been nattering on, he’d drifted off in thought. Being the head of the Pet Peeves Club had been a long-held dream of his, a point of pride in truth, but it had never left much room for his own qualms to be aired. He had to be the ear and the voice of this community, and that meant shelving his own sorry business. Namely his wheel dilemma.
Almost a year to the day, his beloved wheel had stopped spinning. His life had quite literally revolved around that apparatus, and when it broke – well, life had stopped for him altogether. He drank his water and ate his pellets every day, but without his wheel he had grown bitter and resentful. He looked out at the sorry gathering of pets before him and in that moment found some faint resolve, some beginnings of an idea. He pulled a paper clip from the stack of papers, and absent-minded began to straighten out the metal to a point.
All they need is a purpose, and someone to give it to them. Once they have that…well who will need owners then?