The cymbals rush, and I bite my tongue. No blood. Some blood. Nobodies looking. I must stress that I am not diabetic. Not to my knowledge. If a part of my body displeases me, I soak it in tea tree oil until it goes black and falls off. I soak my cock in a glass of the stuff. Stupid thing. The doctor told me a lie, and then suggested I measure my sadness with a piece of string. She was considerably younger than me. Bony fingers on bony hands. Fingers that had been inside of her. Hands that had prayed to a god as distant to me as the sun is to its shadow. At the end of a snaking street is a train station. At night, a guy wearing a sleeping bag over his shoulders asks me for money. I pretend I don’t have any. I’m not sure why. Everything is scorched. Everything a sham. In the next town over, I’m a teenager again. Spots and Dr Pepper. Bus tickets and the remains of masturbatory spurs pumped into white socks soon to be tossed in the outside bin without my parents’ knowledge. It’s a Saturday. PlayStation 2 and pornos bought from the Pakistani man who knows me through my shock of red hair, and because I buy pornos as I’m light years away from the real thing. He knows I’m underage, but he takes pity on me for my freakish ways. He’s no longer around. I read his obituary in the paper. His smile still shines, but the older I get, the more I forget, and the less of what I am makes sense. Kept the paper and scissored out his details as a souvenir, but over the years, it’s slipped from my grasp like everything else.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US