Heartache Box

Some things are better off forgotten, lest they become a perpetual mental torment. Heartache. Frightening Things. Bad Things You've Seen. All The Bad Things You've Done. But they rise to the surface again and again, over and over, like great big whales coming up for air. They won't leave you alone. They won't let you sleep.

This is what I do.

I imagine a box. Maybe a cardboard shoe box, or perhaps an ornate wooden chest. I picture it just sitting there, in the big white space of my mind. And every time those torturous thoughts rise up I imagine snatching them from my mind as one would rip down a poster from a wall. I open the box, throw the thought inside and then slam it shut. Sometimes I put the box behind a locked door. Sometimes I pick it up and drop-kick it over the invisible goalposts of infinity. And then the thought is gone, and I think about something else, immediately. If, of course, the thought happens to come back, I'll just repeat it all over again, until it's gone. 

I started off with one box. It was a heartbreak box. I wrote his name on it. Now I have several, names or titles scrawled on in marker or carved into wood. They sit together in silence in the recesses of my mind. Sometimes I'll open one up and revel in bitter sweet memories. Sometimes I'll want to burn one entirely, for it's full to the brim with pain. But I never do.

Most of the boxes are dusty. But one remains clean because I open it so often, and shut it again so frequently. I've taken it from the shelf and put it back again, over and over. I can never leave it be. I have locked it away so many times. But I always bring it back.

I should burn it. But I never could.

The Cat Who Grew Wings

Sorrel was a grey tabby cat with green eyes. He lived in a little city house with a little city garden. His owner, a nice lady named Alicia Barnhardt, was very kind to him. Once a week she bought him a fresh salmon fillet (which was, admittedly, rather indulgent, but she rather liked the man who worked at the local fishmonger's and thus took any excuse to pay a visit). Sorrel was a lucky cat. He spent his days lounging in the sun, or curled up in strange positions around the house, such as the laundry basket or the bathroom sink. Alicia even turned a blind eye when he scratched the furniture.

But deep inside Sorrel's little feline soul was a kind of primal sadness. Some days he would just walk around the tiny garden in circles, looking down mournfully at its hard, expensive paving, and looking up longingly at the high brick walls. Sorrel wasn't sure why (he was a cat) but he wanted nothing more than to leap those walls. He felt like there was something more he should be doing with his claws, other than putting scratches in Ikea furniture. He felt like his teeth should be sinking into something other than soft-fleshed salmon. It wasn't something he specifically thought of course. But each time he bit down into it, it was as if it gave way too easily. Like that feeling you get when, climbing the stairs, you put a foot down for the last step only to find thin air. Or when, after a drastic haircut, you brush your hair and your arm just falls away too soon. His life lacked substance.

One evening, when Alicia sat stroking Sorrel's silky coat after a long day at work, she felt something a little strange. A slight bump above his shoulder blade. He mrroowwlled when she touched it. Concerned, she felt the other side, only to find the same thing there. Had they always been there? Could they be tumours? Tumours don't grow symmetrically, surely not. Alicia phoned the vet. The only appointment he could give her was next Tuesday evening. It was only Monday. She hoped, in that case, that it was nothing serious.

The next day, however, the bumps seemed to have gotten bigger. It was nothing short of bizarre. But Sorrel didn't seem to be in much pain. He carried on his usual feline activities - sofa scratching and sink napping - without giving them much thought. They kept growing, though.  They grew larger every day, big lumps under his fur that felt like they contained bones, that pushed upwards and outwards. By Sunday night, Alicia could hardly bear to touch them. They protruded in a way that was almost wing-like. But how could a cat grow wings? Sorrel had begun to act very strangely, too. He spent long hours just staring at the sky, or trying to open the Velux windows in the bedroom with his forepaws (to no effect).

By Monday evening, the lumps were undoubtedly wing-like. But Alicia was rather hysterical at this point, because, apart from the fish-man, Sorrel was the love of her life. She hastily fetched the cat carrier as soon as she got home from work. She needed to take him to the vet as soon as possible.

Sorrel saw the cat carrier and immediately decided he was having none of it. He scrrROOWWLLed  and scampered up the stairs, Alicia hot on his furry little heels squealing NOOOoo darrlling, come baaack! Sorrel scurried into the bathroom, where, to Alicia's horror, she had left the window open. He bounded onto the toilet, up onto the window sill, and leapt right out. Alicia SCREAAAMED. She ran to the window to look out, bracing herself to see a cat pancake lying on her expensive paving stones. But Sorrel was not there, nor was he a pancake. Mysteriously, he was perched in a tree in the neighbour's garden. A pair of glorious, furry wings folded neatly on his tabby back. Then he leapt and glided down onto Alicia's high garden wall, but Alicia didn't see, because she'd fainted.

Now Sorrell flies joyfully from tree to tree, hunting sparrows and squirrels and fat city pigeons. Sinking his claws into tender flesh and feeling the satisfactory crack of bones under his sharp little teeth. And feeling the wind in his whiskers as he flies above roof tops, chasing crows.

Post-Its

Someone was leaving post-its all over Simone's flat whilst she slept.
It started with one. On the bathroom mirror. YOU'RE FAT, it said.
Simone was taken aback. She was a tad overweight (A healthy yet buxom size 14, but only at Peacocks and only when she breathed in.) But FAT? Fat was... fat was how she would describe herself. From someone else's lips, or here, pen, it was rather hurtful. Very hurtful, in fact. YOU'RE FAT, Simone read to herself. Then she stopped worrying about what it said and realised, very abruptly, that she should be wondering how it had gotten there. She lived alone, in a basement flat on a nice(ish) street in Maida Vale. Someone could have gotten in, but only through the bedroom window, and she would have been sleeping right beside it. It unsettled her deeply. She studied the handwriting. Neat block capitals in a red felt-tip. She didn't even own a red felt tip. This was an outside job. She crumpled it up and threw it in the bathroom bin. She was late for work. She could worry about it once she was on the bus.

But after a long day at her dead-end desk-job, she was too tired to give it a thought. This was a blessing, for had she remembered, sleep would not have come easy. Thankfully, it did.

The next day, however, there were three of them. One on the mirror again. YOU'RE FAT, it said. The second one was on the kitchen cupboard. YOU'RE A FAT MESS. Oh, thanks, thought Simone. Not just fat, but also a mess. The third was in her left shoe. YOU'RE GOING NOWHERE. Yeah, I am, thought Simone. I'm going to work. And she left, the irony hanging in the air behind her like a heavy cloud.

That night she couldn't forget it. It was probably her brother, playing a prank. She tried to remember if he still had a set of keys, but she wasn't sure. Maybe it was the landlady, although she was in her seventies and didn't seem to have much of a sense of humour, not even a twisted one. Simone double locked the doors and checked that her windows were properly shut. After hours of lying with her eyes open, she eventually fell asleep, though all through the night she dreamt of strange people drawing on her with red felt-tips.

In the morning, there were more. A lot more. They said things like YOU'RE A WASTE OF SPACE and YOU'D BE BETTER OFF DEAD - they had drifted dangerously from offensive to mildly threatening. Although one just said YOU'RE OUT OF MILK (she was). This was scary. This was beyond a joke. She called her brother, who swore he knew nothing, and suggested she tried the police. He sounded really concerned. She asked him to cut it out, but then he reminded her he'd given back the spare keys and that she'd put them in her drawer. She didn't quite believe him, but it seemed rather likely so she thanked him and hung up.

But she didn't have time to check the drawer. Simone was late for work again. God, she hated her job. It was bad enough that she was getting harassed by post-its, but the messages were hitting home. She hurried out the door, not even bothering to take the post-it out of her shoe (YOU'RE SQUASHING ME, FATTY). If it happened again, she thought, she would call the police. Maybe she should get someone to stay the night, just to be sure. If only I had a boyfriend. (Later she found a post-it in her lunch box reiterating her single status - NO ONE LOVES YOU - and in brackets below, it said because you're fat.) Great, she thought.

But she couldn't think of anyone to ask without seeming crazy. Perhaps she should just phone the police. That night when she got home, she did so. She felt very silly, but the person on the other end of the phone made her feel better about having called, and suggested that she stay somewhere else that night, and that they would  send someone to survey the premises and watch for the intruder. It really ramified the danger. If someone was breaking in, they could do anything to her. Nothing was being taken, or even moved; their motives could be altogether more sinister. Simone would be all too glad to stay somewhere else. She booked a room in a local hotel and started packing an overnight bag. Then she remembered the key. She went over to her chest of drawers and pulled open the top one, just to be sure her brother hadn't been lying.

Lying there, among other general household detritus, were the spare keys. Simone felt a shiver down her spine. Things had become more real. Shaken, she began to close the drawer, then something caught her eye. Three things, actually.

One: a block of yellow post-it notes.
Two: a red felt-tip pen.
Three: a small, fleck of red ink, on the index finger of her right hand.
Her writing hand.

The Pizza Shop

I went into a pizza shop and the man behind the counter said, "what kind of pizza do you want?" and I said, "what do you have?"
He said, "menu's on the wall," and I said, "oh."
The menu had pizza names, no descriptions, and the names were a bit strange. Rainforest pizza. Rock-pool pizza. So I picked one I liked the sound of, just to break the tension. "I'll have a medium meadow pizza, please."
"£6.50, please."

I sat on the steps outside whilst I waited. Fifteen minutes later he said, "medium meadow pizza", and I took the warm box from the counter, thanked him, and left. I walked across the street and headed to the park.

When I got there I sat down cross legged on the warm grass, placed the box in front of me and opened it.
The smell wafted up into my face. The smell of hay. The pizza was on a bed of hay. It was topped with a variety of fungi, and strewn with poppy petals and clover and dandelion leaves. I was taken aback, but curious. I took a bite. It tasted of a summer's day. I devoured it all, savouring its strange, fragrant deliciousness. Glad that I hadn't chosen the rock-pool pizza.

The Animals Escape the Zoo

One fine day in early May, the animals escaped from the zoo. They'd planned it meticulously, of course. They had spent weeks preparing. The meerkats slunk out of their enclosure and stole all of the tranquilliser darts from the store room, and chewed holes in all the nets. The vervet monkeys stole a set of keys from a zoo keeper and hid them in a hole at the top of a tree. Meanwhile, sparrows helped spread the word from cage to cage, and each enclosure leader began to strategise their escape plan.

The day of the escape, the zoo keepers noticed that some of the animals were behaving rather strangely, but they didn't give it much thought. They were animals, after all. You can't rationalise animal behaviour based on human standards. The armadillos were looking a little shiftier than usual though. And the flamingos. There was something in their eyes... it looked like they knew something the keepers didn't. They did.

At midday on the dot, the vervet monkeys let themselves out and stealthily scampered to the gazelle enclosure. The first thing the keepers knew about the breakout was when they saw a gazelle leap past the staff room with seven grey monkeys riding on its back like little furry jockeys. "Quick! Get the tranquillisers! Animals on the loose!" Walkie-talkies were going off all over the shop; but it was much too late to spread the alarm. The gazelle-riding monkeys had already ridden round and opened enough enclosures that they were followed by a veritable army of domestic beasts turned wild. And the tranquilliser guns were all mysteriously empty...

The terrified public fled, screaming, terrorised by the oncoming wave of roaring lions and gorillas pounding their chests and baring their teeth. Grown men cried and children cheered; Mothers wailed and babies giggled. All the while, elephants and giraffes and llamas and zebras were rampaging through the zoo, primates of all sizes riding on their backs and wielding sticks and stolen umbrellas. It was chaos. The keepers tried in vain to catch the penguins in big nets, to no avail; the nets had been chewed through. En masse, the animals left the premises, spilling out into the streets of London. All but the fish. And the tortoises. And the slow lorris (a keeper tickled him into submission).

As soon as they'd escaped the zoo, the animals dropped their scary wild beast act. It was only really necessary for the escape. Now it was time to have some fun! They hopped on buses or walked leisurely down avenues, heading for the city and all the exciting new sights and sounds.

The gorillas and ostriches made a beeline for Oxford street, where, joined by the zebras, they had a whale of a time in big Topshop. The llamas stuck to Urban Outfitters, because they were pretty alternative. The elephants and rhinos headed for the Tate modern, and the Komodo dragons and crocodiles went to the natural history museum to check out their ancestors. The big cats opted for a trip to Harrods, where they sampled some choice smoked salmon and caviar. Meanwhile, the monkeys went to the Rainforest Café and ordered Rasta Pasta, and the hippos headed to Camden to get some tattoos.

At the end of the day, after a ride on the London Eye and a boat trip down the Thames, they headed home on their all day railcards. The keepers were very angry, but worse, above all, they were disappointed. All the animals were all grounded for a month.

The Great Pink Grapefruit

The golden light of the Californian morning sun played delicately through the translucent citrus leaves, casting dappled shadows across Maria's busy hands. The rungs of the wooden ladder, worn smooth over the years, were pressing into her soles, and the basket weighed heavily on her shoulders. Suddenly she froze, her eyes fixed on a site that caused her brows to furrow. The grapefruit she held slipped a little as her fingers slackened in distraction. She dug her nails in at the last minute, and caught it, making slight dents in its waxy surface. Absent-mindedly she reached over her shoulder and let it roll into the basket while she continued to gaze into the foliage that surrounded her head. There, in front of her, halo'd in sunlight, was the largest grapefruit she had ever seen. The size was not the only astounding attribute; the main cause of her fascination was the bright pearlescent glow that seemed to suffuse the skin with yellowish light. It was as though, on that one branch, out of the thousands on that one humble tree, out of the thousands in the hundred acre orchard, hung the very sun itself. She positioned herself carefully at the top of the ladder and reached out towards the huge golden orb. She only realised the true size of the thing as her fingers touched it; it dwarfed her hand entirely. As she touched the smooth skin she let out a surprised gasp as an electric tingle passed through her fingers and up her arm. "Ayyy!" she exclaimed, without having meant to. She withdrew her hand and began to descend the ladder, to where her Grandfather stood in the dewy grass beneath her. "What's wrong, Maria?" her Grandfather asked. She faltered. She felt that perhaps the giant grapefruit was something she should keep to herself, though she couldn't say why. "A splinter," she lied. She feigned picking it out, then climbed back up the ladder and carried on picking, though she could barely tear her eyes from the gargantuan fruit.

That night, she slithered out of her bedroom window and down the branches of the tree in her front garden. She carried a torch to light her way back to the orchard. She wanted another look at the grapefruit. When she was barely even half-way there, she saw an orange glow amidst the dark mass of leaves. She knew what it was immediately. She turned off her torch and followed the light of the giant grapefruit.

When she reached the tree, she gasped. The grapefruit was larger and more beautiful than she had remembered it; it filled the whole tree, and all its leaves, with its golden, peachy light. It seemed to be swelling before her eyes. In fact, it was...

It was getting bigger, and bigger; bending leaves and twigs around it out of its way. It began to pulsate and it glowed brighter, like fire, and suddenly, it burst. Maria brought her arms up sharply to protect her face; now they dripped with grapefruit juice. She was covered in it. Slowly she lowered her arms and looked back up at where the giant grapefruit had been.

 In its place, and all around it, a swarm of golden fireflies danced. They had been spewed from the grapefruit like sparks from a pine wood bonfire, and for a few moments, they spiralled in the air and wove around branches. Then they dissipated, and drifted away, and Maria was left in darkness.

Mary's Delusions.

I carried the flowers to his tomb. I came with his mother and the others. We were silent and solemn; still in a state of paralysis, shock and regret and disbelief. Disbelief that he had been taken from us. I felt betrayed. He said he was the Son. Yet they slew him like a dog; we saw his blood and it was the same colour as everyone else's.

When we arrived, we were dismayed to see the stone had been rolled away. Vandals, or thieves. How could they! Have they not done enough? But suddenly, two men appeared, and told us he had risen. I ran into the tomb in disbelief, but it was empty save for the cloth his body had been wrapped in. He had risen! My heart flowed to the brim with joy, and relief.

And then I woke up. The same dream, every night since they nailed him up. My heart sank to the soles of my feet with the realisation of his death. Death was irreversible. He is gone forever. I will never see him again, in this mortal world.

I shook the feeling off and pulled myself out of bed. There was no time to wallow in misery and despair. His mother would be waiting for me. It's Sunday morning, and today we are going to visit his tomb. I need to see that stone, unmoved, unmovable. I need to let him go.