The rollercoaster stopped before the drop, with the harnesses digging into our shoulders and our faces tilted to the ground. I thought: how can it break down here, when all it has to do is fall? The longer we hung there, the more I hoped they would winch us back or walk us out. My need for gravity had bled out of me. But then we fell.
Daily stories
I've been writing a tiny story every day since October 2024. You can read them here.
After the flood, when everything was rearranged, we left things as they were. The cars haphazard in the streets looked much as they always had. Less so the ice-cream van in my garden, which gaped its serving window down into the mud and wouldn't chime no matter what we tried. I planted in the sediment that lay over the Co-op car park, recalling my Year Five topic book on the Nile. Nothing sprouted. That silt was all plastic scraps and spilled petrol and concrete, and the wrong type of shit.
A cluster of brown leaves had clung on all through winter and into the spring. Amy, always thoughtful of things smaller than herself, was afraid that they would stop the new leaves coming through. My voice pressed at my throat to reassure her, but I stopped, and stooped, and bore her up on my shoulders so she could reach to tear the dead leaves down. The old may fall away for the new, but doesn't always. I would not have her complacent. Let her own hands clear the way.
Through hedge archways and little doors in walls, I passed from one part of the garden to the next. Each was laid out the same, down to the flaking paint on the bench. In one it might be spring, everything in bloom: in the next it was winter, the bench recoated in white and a smiling snowman next to it. One showed the garden as it was at night, the sky always perfectly clear and full of stars. My favourite to walk in held a frosty morning, with the sun risen just enough to sparkle on the grass but not thaw it, and everything silent but the birds. I walked and walked, but could never find it.
Right in the middle of the brambles, where neither arms nor birds could reach, was the plumpest blackberry I had ever seen. I came back with my scratched arms and my thick gloves and my secateurs. I cut and cut, but my prize only seemed to retreat deeper into the prickles. My gloves tore and my secateurs broke and my arms bled. When I gave up and turned around, the briar had closed up behind me.
On rainy days there was always a big wet dog in the café, so much damp fur spilling over its eyes and nose that infrequent customers generally mistook it for a coat. Nobody brought it: it whined at the door when the rain started, and walked in circles near it when the sun came out, and on dry days it was never seen. If the rain lasted past closing, it slept by the radiator. All the people of the café knew that one day it would rain and the dog would not come, and they would share an unspoken grief. But they were wrong. The big wet dog outlasted all of them.
In the new world, we made our homes in the mouths of huge carnivorous plants. They seemed not to notice us. We were like nothing else in that strange country. The plants were good hosts: they dissolved the carapaces of the local creatures and, getting all they needed from those tough parts, returned the meat to us. Back home, I found I could not sleep without the sweet scent of their lure, the gentle pulse of their motion, the prickle of their hairs at my back.
I set off early to the emotion recycling centre , so it would be quiet. At the barrier a man in hi-vis waved me down. "What have you got?" he asked.
"Anger, regret. A bit of old grief. Oh, and some shame."
"We can't take shame," he said.
I was only really there for the shame. "Where am I supposed to take it, then?" I asked him.
He just shrugged. "It's hazardous. You'll need a specialist service. The rest is OK." And he waved me through.
I dropped my feelings in the relevant containers, and then I glanced around for cameras and fluorescent tabards, before throwing my shame in the place marked "General malaise". I know it was wrong. But I didn't feel too bad about it.
Once or twice in the time it takes to wear out a pair of shoes, I might allow myself a small act of destruction. A key dragged along the side of a car, or the last page torn out of a library book. A cigarette lighter held in just the right place. It steadies something in me. But haven't you noticed, the way shoes wear out so quickly these days?
There are times when it is hard to tie a tie. In grief or in excitement. When the fingers are numb with cold or slick with sweat. When someone is watching. When your neck is swollen and painful. While driving. When laughing. When you have recently had a cord pulled tight around your throat until your vision clouded. With your arm in a cast. When nobody ever taught you. When an angry ex has shredded all your ties with the kitchen scissors. When you once knew how, but have forgotten.