Lost to the world, the blast of a horn brings her back to the here and now. Thinking once more of the Elephant Man as she wipes her nose on the sleeve of her coat, she imagines him again hurrying through the backstreets of London, endlessly pursued by those hellbent on giving him a good beating. With the image of his arms swinging wildly by his side like bellowing trunks, she remembers hearing some fact about his genitalia being unaffected by the growths that claimed the majority of his body. Hardly beneficial to him, it seems. Resting the side of her face against the wall, she stares at the group of drunks in the distance. She doesn’t wish them death, and yet she knows death will be the only good thing to come of their tiny lives, for life has forgotten them even while they’re alive, which says everything. Grunting at those who pass them and at their own tails, she suddenly feels the cold creeping into her bones. The door that will take her inside the studios is only a few feet away, and yet she finds herself delaying her escape. The streets are strange, and yet, so is she, so she squints at the images that appear through the mist, taking great delight in how dreamy they make her feel. Holding onto the bricks soaked with years of magic and memories as if they were the arms of her father, a light wind comes and blows the curls of her hair. Caressing her chin, it then blows dead leaves around her feet. Their dance is a peaceful one—one that reminds her of alleyways next to cemeteries where she would go as a kid to smoke cigarettes and flick through the pornos she’d steal from her father’s secret stash because the sight of another woman’s noonie did something to her that put a tickle in her tummy like no other.

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