Basement Archive Room

It's an 8 page ebook.
Well, pdf.
It's a sort of partial archive.

Basement Archive Room

Print it off, pass it along. e-mail it out to your friends.
I'd appreciate it.

There'll be more.

Goodnight.

Fifty Odd Words No. 55

"So why don't we all just sit about staring at each other over mixed nuts and sherry, praying that the other nutters in the room will roll over and die to avoid the possibility we might have to actually talk to each other. Wouldn't that be fun? I think I might hate you and your Christmas."

Fifty Odd Words No. 54

When he got off the bus he stopped, then dropped and picked up an empty plastic bottle. A few metres on, he did the same, as if to put it down. He didn't. He walked on.
The woman in front of me, upright and smart, frowned as she studied him.

Fifty Odd Words No. 53

I couldn't go through with it.
"Please."
"You're too weak for this."
"It's what I want."
The truth was: I was too weak.
And then you're lips against mine; all cracked and worn. A tight, pinching grip on my shoulder.
Your eyes were fluttering.
In my head I knew. Either it was ecstasy or a death throe.

Fifty Odd Words No. 52

...And the clicking ticks of a clock.
You didn't think we'd make it, but we very nearly did. It felt like a lifetime of watches had fallen through my hands, and one of them recorded that moment.
I lost the taste of your lips.

Fifty Odd Words No. 51

There is a building on one side, fenced off and wrapped in swaddling. Men in fluorescent suits busy themselves, back and forth, bent under the interminable rain. On the opposite side they raise up towers of steel and glass, grasping at a bitter sky and blocking out the light, casting my path into darkness.

Fifty Odd Words No. 50

Two men used the alley as a shelter from the sun.
"You'd think with all this shade, the city would be cooler." The first said.
Their bodies hung low in the muted light: drab without colour.
The second thumped his foot against the dumpster. "Instead the tarmac soaks it right up. "

Fifty Odd Words No. 49

Half of my muscles are ready to snap, so I sit, huddled, inside of myself.
A woman further up peers over. I smile, try to appear friendly. She thinks I'm nervous.
She turns away, then her eyes flick back.
The man across from me shouts to the driver: "You gotta turn right here."

Fifty Odd Words No. 48

I had this dream. It was dark and I was pushing through a corn field, you know? The sort where the ears come right up to your chest and it’s like you’re wading through water. The moon lit up the leaves like ghosts.

And where did you go?

Nowhere, I was lost.

Fifty Odd Words No. 47

She felt, in a way, like she had been abandoned.
Left to sour.
Her arm ached from his weight and her back urged to buckle. His face though: round, peaceful (perfect), slept an unending sleep.
So she waited on, wrapping the mac tighter about them as the rain pummelled on.

Fifty Odd Words No. 46

He fell out of himself, collapsing through memories and landing face down in his worst thoughts.

He traced a bloody path through the house of things left and turned right, but felt wrong.

The waterfall he had created ran red from the top, warping what he had forsaken.

Fifty Odd Words No. 45

It is a tune playing, endlessly, in my head against which I struggle to progress in the day-to-day.

It drowns out all common noise, that situational stuff kept locked up in one's subconscious.

I used to fight, but am now a disinterested shell, trapped up in this wondrous melody I can never identify.

Fifty Odd Words No. 44

The bare, alien bulb swings like a thief.

“We could change the date.”

Slouched in his seat, he draws on a beer.

“But is that what we want?” Comes the reply from an eclipsed corner.

A laboured sigh.

“Neither of you understand.”

A rippled silence.

“Nor will you ever.”

Fifty Odd Words No. 43

It was bears this time, in my bedroom. I had to hide beneath the covers, hide my breath and my scent.

If I wanted to live I had to become, in effect, dead.

I could not move, could not tremble - could not fear.

But then the wet snout started its way down my spine.

Fifty Odd Words No. 42

I remembered then what I had meant to do.

Night was bleeding out and I couldn’t see your face.

I placed my fractured fingertips against the edge of your thigh.

It felt dry and cold, so I placed an ear against your chest and held my breath, for hope of hearing a thump.

Fifty Odd Words No.41 + Berries

I waited by the door most days. On that hard step, where we first met.

When it rained, I wore a coat. When the sun went out, I held my phone up to see by; a little light shining for you.

Whenever the postman came, he would ask: “Still waiting?”

And I would reply: “Always.”

Also, I found this: it looks like the berries are exploding out of her mouth, like she is mother nature.

Apocalypse

“Where will you be?”

“When?”

“At the apocalypse.”

He snorts, and rolls his head back.

She continues to look at him, unmoving; deadpan.

“Oh.”

They dangle their legs over the concrete ledge, close to the lapping canal water. Dead scum floats beneath their feet and it smells faintly of a harbour when the tide rolls out. They watch light dancing against the blank underbelly of the bridge, carrying traffic. Around them the detritus of broken industry lies shattered; a burnt out car, rusted steel drums, puddles made iridescent with a thin veneer of oil. A halo of fast food packaging flutters in the wind. Few boats wander past. Crickets chatter.

He thinks about what it would be like, to see the world end. Would it be quick, or drawn out? Would he even have the chance to make a phone call? He lies back a moment and tries to imagine that the sun is now a searing explosion washing over his body. If it was, then he’d be dead by now. Vaporised: burned into the earth as a permanent shadow.

“With my family then, I guess.”

She sighs.

“I don’t think you understand. It’s not about where you want to be, but where you will be.”

“I never thought about it like that.”

“It’s not such an easy question.” She holds her hands out, palms up as though the concept were an object for him to see. Her naked feet form a Newton’s cradle. The sound of skin kissing bounces off the water and concrete. He feels, for a moment, as he did when he was a child at the local swimming pool, listening to the unreal sounds of water slapping and voices ricocheting. Chlorine burning his nostrils.

He draws his eyes down, shuttering them from the sun.

“I’d be at home then, he says: sleeping and it would all be over by the time I woke up, or rather I would never wake up because I miss important events. Always have,” he adds, quieter.

“I like that.” She pulls a loose hair from his cheek and blows it away. “Permanent sleep. I wonder if you’d carry on dreaming.”

“Probably not.”

She brushes back one side of her hair, tucking it behind an ear. She cranes her head a little. The first audible chug from a pleasure boat rolls in from around a distant meander.

“I think I’ll be in a supermarket,” she says. “And I’ll be the only one smiling. Have you ever noticed that? That people never smile in supermarkets? They all carry expressions of boredom; or else annoyance, or inconvenience. I saw this woman once, in the queue and she was worried, you know? Like something was distressing her. She had the face of a trapped animal.”

“I’ve never looked that closely.”

“Well I have. And that’s where I’ll be, with all those people and I don’t think their expressions will be any different.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Why don’t you?”
“That’s not what I was asking.”

She giggles at him and shakes her head.

“Alright then,” she says. “I think it will be because they won’t realise what’s happening to them, because the idea that they will all die and no-one will be there to remember them, will be too much to handle. They won’t be able to comprehend it, so they’ll carry on as if nothing is wrong.”

“You’re a pessimist.”

“I’m not deluding myself. There’s a difference.”

“But what if they did realise?”

“They’d laugh. Really hard.”

“And then?”

“It’d be too late, the apocalypse will have happened.”

Fifty Odd Words No.40

I followed his deliberate movements across the limestone to the edge. He combed three fingers through his greying beard.

Against the noon sun his body formed a dark blot on the landscape.

He then collapsed to his knees and allowed his profile to face me, and said: Is this how you would remember my body?

Fifty Odd Words No.39

On the bus, I'm sitting next to a friend. I'm not focusing on much except sitting. The voices about me sound muffled; I have forgotten that I can hear other people.

Across the aisle, and one row in front, a guy crosses himself and kisses the prints of his index and middle fingers, together, as though they are one.

Fifty Odd Words No.38

From his bed she stole his jumper; wrapped her hands in wool and about the top of her thighs. Her legs stretched out naked and waiting, for the pale touch of light.

She sucked deep on a midnight light, and played the smoke like it were a guitar. Against the stifled room, she coughed and crimson touched her palm.