Taking her deeper into the field of long, tall grass on the back of the grumbling badger, the fox licks the rain as it soaks those rushing to the light. For a moment, Gretchen feels as if she’s in a western. Certainly a movie of some kind. One with a chase scene in—a thriller like they show on Friday nights on those trashy cable channels next to the dirty ones her father pretends not to know about. It goes without saying that her mother banned Gretchen from watching movies without proper supervision, but Gretchen is nothing but inventive, and easily finds ways around such opposition. The easiest was to watch them on her father’s cellphone. He would hand it to her at bed after reading her a story, and she would stay up late watching movies on YouTube beneath the sheets. They weren’t often the best, nor of decent quality, but they were undoubtedly better than the religious ones her mother had her watch. The other way, which was far more imaginative, was to take the binoculars from the storage cupboard in the hallway and spy through her bedroom window at the apartments opposite. If she were lucky, she might find someone watching a movie with the curtains drawn. For sure, she couldn’t hear anything, but it was okay, because she made up the sounds in her head, and to her, the movies were better for it. She had no idea why there were binoculars in the storage cupboard. She asked her parents, but they were always evasive on the subject. Still, it didn’t matter. They helped her escape, and to escape was all she wanted.

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