Wallis

No real comments other than it's big. Thirteen pages long and I loved writing this so damned much. Tell me what you think, and I still need to fix a few pointers but tell me if you think anything needs fixing and what. And I hope it's gripping and enjoyable, because I found it pretty damn gripping to write!

The Playground


We know you. Across the distance we still see you playing where we once did. We still love you and you are not forgotten. Any of you. We have moved. And you are still here. We do not know why, but it won't forever be like this. Do not think you are alone. We are all one now. It was not death. It was life. A birth, in Australia. It took our minds at once and made us one. The future, the future has moved and taken us and made us whole. We are happy. But we are sorry at you. Sorry at all of you left behind, we are sorry. I loved you so much Simon, take this ring and hold on to it forever. I hope you join us soon. We are whole and true in our existence. And you and I can be whole and true in ours. I love you.


I turned to him and spoke,

“Are you okay?” and he looked at me. He looked at me like I was the biggest dope alive, and I guess I felt the sting of something. I'm not proud, but I did. I felt angry and bitter, that he didn't appreciate anything.


Not for a moment did he care to appreciate that everyday I'd seen him with her.


And I wouldn't react.


I'd smile and say “Hi,” in all it's simplicity, but I wouldn't go mad. I wouldn't lose my head even though I wanted to. He looked at me and seemed disturbed in it's expression. I wanted to hit him, but I couldn't.


So I didn't.


But, man, in that moment I felt like I could have stamped on a kitten I felt so angry and so malicious. Like as though I'd do anything to hurt him.


But I couldn't.

So I didn't.


“Argh, what the fuck's the matter?” I cried. He just kept staring, it was broken before him. I suppose that's why he saw me as a dope in that moment.


“Look at it, it's smashed to pieces.” He said, sounding smashed to pieces himself.

“Pfft, don't worry. C'mon, let's go.”


“I can't leave it like this,”


I leant forward and picked up the necklace, it gold chain rested in my palms and trinkets that dangled on the end fell off and rolled. I raised an eyebrow and looked at him,


“It's gone mate, c'mon we gotta go.”


I dropped it on the floor and raised up, I placed my hands on my back to soothe the transition and blinked to dry my eyes.


I was tired.


Desperately tired.


In fact, I was so tired that at that very moment I'd forgotten why he was upset. So I leant over again and reminded myself why.


I laughed out loud at my poor memory.


Big mistake,


“What...the....fuck?” He said in a stunted manner, I looked at him confused, “What the fuck is wrong with you!? Why would you laugh at that?!!” And he stood up and shoved me,


“What the fuck man, chill out!” I shouted,


“What....chill out? CHILL OUT? That's all I fucking had! That there is all I had! ALL I HAD! It's gone...fucking gone.” And his voice went shrill and loud, “IT'S FUCKING DEAD! Like her! Dead and gone and that's all I could touch at night, that's all I could dream about! That necklace was the only thing that could remind me about what we lost!! AND NOW IT IS FUCK-ING GONE...and you laugh at me...”


“I weren't laughing at you....”


“WHAT THEN!?”


“I'm tired, and I.....I just laughed because I'm tired and I forgot where we were and what's going on. So I laughed at myself,”


He paused and pulled his lips inwards.....


“Tired?”


“Yeah...”


“We can take a break...” He muttered through a bitter strained tone and he sat down by the column running his hands over his face and through his hair.


I spoke yet again,


“I think I know how to deal with this problem mate.....” and there was no reply, “Right, here we go, k? I run off and grab that crowbar back there...right? And then me and you can nip off to the church, haha, remember that huh? Remember everyone used to say it had tunnels and all that. Well it does, and I'm sure me and you could get back to your house....there my friend....you could get something of hers to dream of. Something to touch...huh?” and I smiled.


“The tunnels wouldn't be half as safe as the street. The streets are still probably diseased, in fact being at the school is pretty fucking bad.”


“Me and you can.....me and you can burn the bodies on the street...?”


“That won't kill the germs...”


“Aw for fuck sake man, do you want some of her shit or not? Now c'mon we've taken the fucking risk of coming back to this place. And for what? To feel at home that's what, now you're telling me that you're too chicken shit to go through the street because of a couple o' corpses lying around on the ground. They've been there for years, I know it's pretty fucking macabre like, but Mrs.Jones ain't gonna get back up and give you some nasty disease. Just don't go eating or fucking the dead bodies and I'm sure we won't catch nothing.”


And I started to laugh,


“Imagine the street sign that was supposed to represent, 'no eating or fucking corpses!'” I chuckled to myself.


“Alright, we'll go in tomorrow. Let's rest today.”


“Aye aye captain!” I said and grinned a massive smile.


2


During the night I sat and wondered. I guess in some way, this kind of thing really intrigued me. The silence and all that, so I got up. You see, we'd taken a detour of a sort, because we'd figured to go to Bristol because of the wave generators they made a while back before the whole death thing happened. And, like, power that was non-renewable would be so damned useful to us. We could live like we used to! But on the way, was a town we used to live in and man! We wanted to check it out so badly.


We stopped off in our school and found the science block empty, it was this big-ass dopey glass building that was always too hot. It had no dead bodies in it so we bedded up in it. But I have an awful sense of curiosity to me, so I got up and started wandering.


I was hardly afraid of those cadavers anyway. But there was something in them, that once in a while, would scare. I mean, who wouldn't, but as long as they were skeletons and nothing else I didn't mind them.


But, err, you don't see as much of them these days. But around one in every fifty are still about. These ones that don't decay right, they keep kind of fresh and even warm. They have these pulled down faces and the skin on the eyes pull down so that the face looks like a rubber mask. Those do scare me, and not because of no typhoid! They really get to me, when sometimes you see just a little bit more than a dead body, you see a sort of feature that looks like it belonged to someone.


Like it was, and still is, someone.


I mean...


No, I don't mean, I really am saying here that those bodies that are still fresh. They scare me, they're the demons that haunt me in the night. Those fuckers get to me so badly that it's not even funny or worthy of a joke.


So when I see a skeleton, or a white bony skull, I'm pretty fucking relieved that it isn't some nine year old girl with hair and teeth and gums and all that.


And you know what scares me the most....is that I was good at biology, and yeah I spotted the little error in there, gums are the first part of a human body to decay and that's what makes me scared. Something is actually wrong.


Wrong and not just anomalous.


I was thinking all this, and giving myself the shakes for nothing, as I wandered around a more than familiar school hall at night with my hands touching both walls. It was silly because they felt the same as any other wall, but I was hoping I could remind myself of what it was like when I was a pupil there and it was my school. And even maybe remind me of my childhood.


The smell of the place was gone off, it smelt wooden and rotten and cold and damp and all bloody things. So it lost most of the atmosphere it had when I was young. Which was a shame. I was hoping to get a sense of humanity.


I,err, I got it! In a funny kind of way. Because, I was wandering down this hallway and to my right there was this corridor. And there, just there half away down that little corridor there lay two skeletons. I stopped, and looked at the moonlight that fell down on them. It was black and white because it was night, it was like a noir film. And in this little noir scene, with two skeletons simply laying against a wall with slit window light falling upon them highlighting the snowy dust, in this very scene I found my humanity.


They were holding hands, and by now the bones in the hands had lost their ligaments and the little finger bones were just puddled into each other. The white frame ribs and long twig thy bones were hidden by a black year eleven P.E top and a netball skirt. They were holding their hands because they knew it was the end. They must've loved each other.


What the hell was in me I don't know... It didn't click until all the way back what they were.


Because, like, there were these twins in the year above me.


They were close with each other and always doing athletics and running. We were a small school, so they were the twins.


And it must've been the twins who had laid before me, lying down on the floor in their school P.E kit holding each others hands. Skeletons of what they once were. I remember that back then they never liked me because I was a scruff, even though they were quite stupid in their ways, and I was a bit bright. So really I had the right to be condescending but nope, they assumed they were better than me!


And to me, that defined their personality.


It defined them in everything they did. They were snobby cows in my eyes.


It wasn't nice but it gave them character, but now they were defined by something else. They were holding hands and I realised that defined them. Not our petty arguments, but that there!


And I asked myself, if I had died too and become a bag of bones, what would have defined me?


Probably I'd lie upon my knees desperately trying to convince some girl that what she'd once told me was now literally true, and that it was the end of time and she owed me what I asked for.


I'd die on my knees begging a girl, so that I might die getting laid. Well, I say that because it's funny. Really I wouldn't, I'd die desperately trying to run eight miles in four minutes to my mother's house so I could protect my two year old sister.


That's what'd define me, a skeleton clinging on a lamppost trying to reach a house with someone precious in it. I tell you truthfully, that's not how it'd be now. I'd die with my arms open, because this fucking shit hole has become boring and empty and I'm prepared to put a gun against my head now.


It's just...


It's just I don't want to think I've been left behind and that....and that I have to die like everyone else. Because it's not true.


I wandered back slowly through the corridor, all bored and tired and weary and so on. Simon lay upon the floor with his back to a wall, he was fingering the necklace and was, obviously, awake. He seemed solemn and deep so I put on my solemn and deep voice,


“I remember the countdown,” I said.


“We all do,”


“I remember the twins in the year above us, I remember that one was fat and the other thin. I remember us all saying, we'd love to do the thin one and maybe even the fat one.”


“They were nice to each other, more than anyone else.”


“I remember....” I muttered, “I remember this girl I loved. I remember her hair, and her skin and her voice and her laugh. I used to dream of her, when I'd often beg other girls to shag me I'd never talk to her. Because I didn't want to destroy her beauty, because I'm not beautiful or elegant or anything other than seedy.”


“But she wasn't an angel was she?”


“She was in my eyes. But she was a whore in others, she shagged my best mate.” And I smiled and looked at him.


He smiled back, “She really was beautiful, wasn't she? This necklace, it was something she gave me. It was cheap and she won it off a machine,”

“She didn't win it...”


“Who did?”


“I did, I think so anyway. The one time I got the balls to chat to her when you weren't around. I saw her kicking in this machine in an arcade once. Going off her rocker, like she used to, and I asked if she needed a hand. So I won it for her, she was grateful and thanked me and then skipped off.”


He stared at the necklace, “I really do need something of hers to remember her by. This isn't even hers...”

“We'll get something, tomorrow mate don't worry,” I spoke and then my tone changed,. “But....I want a compromise,”


“What?”


“I wanna see my sister...”

“That's eight miles away...!”


I stopped and said the one thing that could justify such a waste of time“I remember the countdown. Do you know where I was? I was trying to run eight miles before it ended.”


He paused and then thankfully accepted it,“I remember finding you, just having been hit by a car. God, I remember that so well.”

“So that's it then, we stop off in all our homes. I have to see her and it won't...well it will...hurt to see what happened to our relatives. Even yours....” I said.


“Even mine....”

Voodoo

It's not long.

I've a feeling I'm about to become intimately peaceful with a bed and a pillow, so I'll just subscrie to this, and give it you later.

I forget, pm me. I'm just really tired...

Joelle

Is this the end..?
Parts of this were confusing, so try to clarify and give the story some substance. For example, the fact that the twins are skeletons makes me think the narrator's school days were a long, long time ago..so is his sister even still at his old house? You got wordy in some parts and some descriptions were worded awkwardly and hard to understand. This piece has potential, and I like the idea behind it. Keep working on it.

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When he was with her, the music never stopped.

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joelle-writing