Waking from my nap, I ventured into bright, blinding sunshine. The light washed over me, illuminating with immaculate clarity the full extent of the ink that floats across my eyes. It was biblical. The town was like a dream. No shadows, just miles of flat, sparkling land, rolling into the ocean. In my head, the memories of conversations from many years ago shimmered like wind chimes. In my hand, an energy drink. It didn’t give me energy, only heartburn. The acid bubbled in me like a perverse thought. I’m full of ’em. They begin as seeds. Tiny ones the size of eyelashes, then they grow like storm clouds. Soon, they take on a life of their own. A bit like love. A bit like lust. Like a dead soul risen from the grave, I darted this way and that through the town like a tapeworm worming its way through the intestines of a fat fuck stuffing their face with processed junk. What was on my mind, other than conversations that are still a soundtrack to my life after so many years, was how big a light-year is, y’know? You know how big a light-year is, right? It’s six trillion miles. The nearest star, after the Sun, is twenty-four trillion miles away. The Milky Way is one-hundred thousand light-years across. By my math, that means everything is so fucking massive and I’m just a tiny pea in a pod, yet when something stirs me, I move outside time, and the confines of what it means to be alive are as meaningless to me as the doubts I have of not being able to work the word the way it should be worked.

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