She tickles herself with Cleopatra’s Needle. It’s long, hard, and riddled with ancient wonder. It stinks of dog piss, too, and the murky waters of the Thames, which is full of bloated bodies and mystical penny-farthings and the last remaining vestiges of old tales belonging to Londoners dead yet alive. They’re stuck in the forties, fearful of the fearsome war, in much the same way we’re afraid of the virus. Everything I do is wrong. Every action, flawed. My existence tiresome; an itch to the nose that needs above all to be sneezed, caught and then violently binned. I can’t win, so I remain mute. I am a demon sexually attracted to humans. I myself was once human until I was consumed by the boredom of their cautionary ways. I swallowed my tongue while high on Lithium. Got bored with that too. Got bored with glue. My mood destined to stew for as long as I draw breath. The death of my childhood causes me great resentment. I resent it with every breath I have left—all of them burnt and smoky, smelling like wet gunpowder. The steps of the temple of Kukulkan. Mayan. Feathered fucks. Zapruder. Masturbater. Old bag lady filming a snuff. There are ghosts. The nightmare of history. Many passages. They come; we go. We can escape, but only if we acknowledge what came before. Minotaur. Bathroom floor. Colorado discipline. The unwinding hours where the fragments of my self are replaced by the fragments of someone else. They worship dirt; they worship things instead of dreams—stuff they think won’t cause them to hurt. Stuff happens. Streets. Lanes. Moon-Room. Many syllables. Many false. Most obscured by waves. Many graves, in the month of May ’42. Dangerous days leading to an unwelcome fate. Many islands that gravitate to her womb; doors showing faces that are out of place with 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