 
Writing Crash

By Jamie J. Buchanan

# Notes

Smashwords Version

Copyright 2016 Jamie J. Buchanan

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Table of Contents

Prelude

The End of Death

The Floodgates

Casualty of Life

Closure

Vivid Whispers

Temporary Relief

The Seduction of Proposal

Memento of Excess

The Penny Dropped

Strange Bedfellows

Finding Fault

O Tannenbaum

The Older Brother

An Easy Death To Handle

Phoenix

Therapy in Absentia

Forgiveness

Déjà vu

Beginnings

#

# Prelude

The spine cracked as I entered virgin territory. I curled back the cover of the paperback gently, a soft arc as I perused the opening page.

"Season Pass", by Jerome Bordeaux.

The pages crisp/clean, that new book smell wafted out of the pages and promised so much. A brand new book, a fresh author I'd never read before. It was an anticipation that was like a drug to me. I love that anxiety, the feeling that I'm about to discover something original and exciting as I open a new tome. It's a different feeling to reading the latest novel by an author you've read before. You know the style, you know what to expect. But a new author? It's a whole different sentiment.

It's like sitting at a comedy club and a comedian you've never seen before comes on stage. "OK funny guy, make me laugh. I'll give you a few jokes, I'll give you a chance. I know you're nervous, but I'm willing to work with you for a while."

Jerome Bordeaux was the new wunderkind of Crime Noir (my agent told me _I_ was a new Wunderkind, but that was before all of this happened). His work was dark, thoughtful and full of long words that I had to assume I knew the meaning for. I'd get the gist of the sentence and, from that, determine an approximate definition of the word. I mean, who uses 'eschew' in day-to-day conversation? Honestly?

I knew this because I was three pages into the book and already I could taste its pretentiousness. The precociously short sentences. The awkwardly arranged alliteration.

Dammit! I liked it!

My agent had the temerity to call me 'wunderkind'. I'm 47 years old – hardly a child in any language. True, though, that I had only written two novels. The first one, "Dancing With Strangers", was a mild success and it enabled me some money so I could finish "A Sliver of Light".

Yes, I know you've heard of that one.

It was the right book, the right style, the right time.

It was the literary equivalent of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'.

The literary equivalent of 'Pulp Fiction'.

And now I'm stewing over my third book and not really getting anywhere.

Actually, the comparison with Tarantino ('Pulp Fiction') is appropriate really. 'Dancing With Strangers' was my 'Reservoir Dogs' – mildly popular, cult classic, well received by critics and peers. And, like 'Reservoir Dogs', it was more widely acknowledged after the sophomore effort – when people checked the limited back-catalogue to discover the mega-success' predecessor.

Cries of "how did I miss this?" resounded.

'A Sliver of Light' was my 'Pulp Fiction'. Where 'Pulp Fiction' resurrected Travolta's career, gave Bruce Willis street cred and established Samuel L. Jackson as 'one cool motherfucker' (I know you said that in your head using Samuel's voice), 'A Sliver of Light' – and the subsequent screen version – brought back Russell Crowe just as he was disappearing into the bloated Kiwi most Australians thought he was. It made John Waters sexy again. It made us all scared of Hugo Weaving – really scared too. It was his John Jarrett 'Wolf Creek' moment – a far cry from Hugo's attempt at menace in 'The Matrix'.

Now I had just finished the first chapter of "Season Pass" by this new guy Bordeaux...and it had me hooked. Like an addict's relapse into the forbidden, my taste of this was sweet, addictive and sensational. I liked it so much that I wished I'd written it. I also knew that I liked it so much that I would have to finish it and, if I'm reading something so damned good, then I can't be writing my own stuff.

I put the book down and picked up the tepid tea – Earl Grey and far too sweet. I wondered if it was okay to absorb some of Jerome's style into my work? The guy was twenty years younger than me...was I too old to be influenced?

The answer was obvious and I knew that my ego would have to take a back seat on this one. If it's good, be influenced by it – that was my pragmatism speaking and he almost always won over my ego. My ego really wanted to hate this book – revile it and denounce it as pappy, arrogant trash. But my ego had no option to concede that it was good and my new novel (such that it was) would have to wait.

Novel...yeah right.

I had been avoiding my agent's insistent questions about what the story was about, or how far into it I was, or when he could read at least a chapter or two. The fact was I had no idea what it was about. I knew how it would start but, beyond the first chapter, there was nothing.

I had no plot, no characters, no second or third act. Hell, I didn't even have a first act! The first chapter was, at best, an okay short story. But I had no idea where it was going.

I put down my tea and picked up Bordeaux's novel.

It was then I knew what my new book would be. It would be a journey for me. As I was reading Bordeaux's work, I realised that part of the excitement here was that I did not know what was coming up. I didn't know where he was taking me – most of what was written on the back of the book had taken place in the first chapter...I had no idea what the rest would be like. I'm sure Bordeaux did, but that's his story to tell. I liked the excitement of adventure. I wanted that form of inspiration for when I was writing my novel. To not know what the future held – to be unsure of where the characters were going, or taking me, and taking the reader. I didn't even know how many characters there would be.

It was the literary equivalent of 'Seinfeld' – the show about nothing.

So that's what I did.

# The End of Death

And this was how it started.

Smash!

_Although, for Tobias, it was in slow motion - the smash was more of an elongated crunch. His mind distorted time, twisted reality and obfuscated the truth. A self_ -defence _mechanism, protecting itself against future pain._

_The car left the road at 95 kilometers an hour, sliding sideways across the empty lanes of blacktop as its_ tyres _aquaplaned through the pools of water. The wheels spun, hopelessly inadequate to gain traction, completely useless against kinetic energy._

Incessant rain + poor drainage = a deathtrap for Tobias' Ford Falcon.

It was a disaster waiting for him to come along and take up his role in it. In an accident waiting to happen, the vital ingredient was Tobias.

And the pedestrian too - he played his part.

The kerb jutted up from the black-top like a ski ramp ready to launch the jumper into glory. As the car's wheels collected with the concrete edge of the road, Tobias felt the world stop. Time ceased, motion paused. His heart skipped slightly as he realized that he was no longer in control of the vehicle - he was as much a passenger within it as his jacket on the back seat, or the fluffy dice suspended under the mirror.

Whilst he slid across the road, he maintained an illusion of control - perpetuated by the steering wheel. He gripped that wheel for dear life, ripping it left, then right violently but with zero effect. No matter which way he turned it, the car continued a wide-arced pirouette, the rear of the metal beast slowly turning as if to overtake the front half.

Control, time, sequence...all of it illusory as reality blurred and paused.

Airborne.

Tires left the road, the engine screamed as Tobias braced for the inevitable landing. His heart felt like it was squeezing in slow motion - a faulty pump vainly squeezing out treacle through a straw. His eyes shut, protecting his mind from the horrors of a sight he never wished to see.

The world upside down.

Momentum and force + a high centre of gravity + a low-set immovable object (like a kerb) = a certain rollover.

As he shut his eyes, the earth approached. The roof collapsed under him, loose change tinkled around his head as the ceiling of the car crumpled under its own weight.

Windows crushed - thank God for safety glass in the windshield. The side windows smashed, a discordant rhapsody played as the shards fell about him, slicing and dicing whatever they came in contact with.

_The roof dug into the soft earth, the weight of the automobile above the collapsing_ aluminium _frame flipped the car again. Once more, turmoil. Up became down, reality and perception disintegrated into free-fall._

The metal now crunched and groaned - a demonic harmonic.

Tobias' hands now screamed with pain as his thumbs broke - the steering wheel spun violently, smashing his thumbs as his hands gripped it with terror. His eyes opened briefly to see red - glass scratched his eyes like sand, blood filled his vision. Through the hell-haze he saw the approaching row of trees.

Tall.

Sturdy.

Immovable.

He braced as the car's wheels found minimal purchase on the slippery grass, curtailing the roll-over, marginally reducing the speed of the imminent impact.

Grey eucalyptus trees approached, attacking, imposing.

Tobias was aware of screaming in the car - human screams. His screams.

The words incoherent, unintelligible.

Time stretched further, prolonging the impact. He wondered when he would see his life flash before his eyes. Wasn't that supposed to happen just about now?

Flash! Back track a bit...rewind back approximately eight seconds to when he was casually driving along, half-asleep at 11.30PM on this wet Friday night. Tobias had just left the pub where his friends were busy drinking - out celebrating being young. Tobias, however, was in no mood for revelry. The week had been longer than most, his back ached from the heavy lifting he had done all week on the building site. His eyes struggled to stay open as he watched his friends get progressively more drunk, more raucous, and more bullet-proof.

It was his turn as designated driver so he fulfilled his end of the unwritten deal they all had - each of them took their turn to drive. But, now that they were set for a big night out, he decided to bail early and get some sleep.

The rain fell in a steady soft pattern, sweeping across the four lanes of traffic like a gentle curtain billowing in the cool breeze. His eyelids struggled to remain open as he drove, his thoughts drifting into a milky cloud of heaviness that preceded sleep for him.

Then...

Snap!

A guy, out of nowhere, stepped out into the road. There was no-one around Tobias - his was the only car on this side of the glassy tarmac. Two lanes headed south and further into suburbia - the northbound lanes on the other side of the overgrown median strip were also devoid of traffic. It was like his was the only car in existence - the guy couldn't have picked a worse time to stumble into the road.

Smack!

An horrific slap/thump sound snapped Tobias into full consciousness as the body smashed into the front passenger side fender, the pedestrian's head whipped forward on an elastic neck, smashing into the corner of the windscreen - blood and hair splashed an obscene tableau.

This came back to Tobias in the mini-second it took for the Falcon to slide on its wheels into the row of trees on the driver's side.

Time resumed and reality was regained.

A one metre diameter tree-trunk smashed into the rear wheel arch, whipping the car around 180 degrees and flipping it again, this time it stayed upside down. An explosion went off inside Tobias as the sound and the force of the impact buffeted him. His right leg snapped just below the knee as the twisted chassis ripped inwards below the steering wheel.

His arms flapped about him, slapping his face and head, fingers snapped as they became caught in the collapsed roof.

The engine roared one last time whilst the metal groaned and creaked.

And rested.

Wheels spun momentarily and, before Tobias passed out through shock and impact, he heard the oppressive roar of silence. It engulfed the carnage, wrapping itself around every element of the equation. The car, the pedestrian, the driver - all cloaked within silence.

The world stopped, breathing curtailed, heartbeats on pause, flickers of consciousness suspended. These were all constructs only, definitions of a reality that had paused for a few brief moments for Tobias. Pain was imminent and he knew it was welling within him - a crescendo building towards an imminent finale.

But, until then, unconsciousness awaited.

The silence rolled in like fog, more overwhelming than the percussive impact that broke the monotony on this wet and windswept night.

The mind protected itself, allowing an altered state of reality to invade the present - consciousness took a back seat as he passed out.

When Tobias looked back at his life, this was the moment he realized was the turning point.

This was when his life began.

My fingers stopped tippy-tapping the keyboard on the iMac – ham-fisted and Neanderthal in their approach to approximating some sort of rhythm and style. I read.

I re-read.

I edited and read again.

Read and repeat – edit and amend.

It was almost ad-nauseum until I fine-tuned the first chapter into what I thought was a finished piece.

Then I fixed it again.

Was I polishing a turd? Or was this now completed?

My wife, the artist, she would have known exactly what I was doing. So many times I had seen her finishing up a canvas, touching up a stroke here and there until, at some point, she would walk away and say: "Now, it's finished."

I never seemed to know when that point was. I would review and re-write, stuck in the mire of a single chapter.

No wonder the novel was still not finished. And, at this rate, it was unlikely to ever be completed.

But, for now, I re-read the chapter again. There were a few phrases I was happy with, the last sentence especially. My demonic self-doubt kicked in almost immediately – a nagging, surreptitious demon of negativity that asked me:

"Are you sure you're not ripping anyone off here?"

I wasn't sure – had I heard these words before? Or approximations of them? Had I sub-consciously buried them only to be regurgitated years later as a literary re-mix? Or were these genuine original thoughts?

I looked at the empty beer bottle next to the screen and it gave me the courage to hit "save" and ignore the demon.

It was a stinking hot summer's day, my sweating skin peeled off the vinyl office chair as I rose to go to the fridge for another beverage. The row of green bottles beckoned me like a bevvy of sirens, calling my name to lure me into their evil grasp.

I knew what the sound meant – time to drown the demon in alcohol and self-satisfaction.

"Pssst!" and the tinkle of the metal cap on the tiled floor signaled the onset of oblivion in the aftermath of satisfaction.

# The Floodgates

The frustration I feel...

I've never felt so impotent, so useless.

These words rung in my head, over and over, like an alarm with no "Off" switch. The hangover hammer pounded away at my skull as my brain tried to find another home, knowing full well that nothing would want to take in this soused, shriveled pathetic excuse for an organ – at least not in its current state. In the meantime, those words reverberated around me.

I saw them in the air – hovering above my head like a visceral thought balloon.

That was how I always felt after a bender.

I knew that I needed paracetamol, aspirin, ibruprofen...anything to help numb that pain. Perhaps a concoction of all three to take away the edge? I knew I needed Vitamin B, maybe Berocca, maybe Hydralite.

I knew I needed rest.

But, before all of that, I needed the keyboard.

The frustration I feel...

I've never felt so impotent, so useless.

They persisted around me, like a mosquito that won't simply fuck right off!

I started to type.

The frustration I feel...

I've never felt so impotent, so useless.

Read: Colby is a sack of bones.

Useless bones, broken bones - bones that don't fit any more. Some of my bones have disappeared. Some were surgically removed, some were ripped from me in the violence that turned me into this vacant pile of undead flesh that can never scream again.

I wonder what happened to my lower legs.

This was my literary version of riffing. It wasn't so much "free-styling", but rather just opening the gates and seeing what would flow out.

I liked the first chapter yesterday – I had a vague recollection of reading it again the night before this day-after. My mind briefly returned to a moment of indulgence where I actually read some of it aloud, a self-indulgent and pretentious act that my hypocrisy easily entertained.

I wondered what my wife would have thought of this. Would she have been amused or bemused? Spell-bound or bored?

To be honest, in the state I was in, it was very difficult to determine anyone else's reactions, emotions or general demeanor. I was beyond empathy or understanding – wallowing in the selfishness of alcoholic excess.

But I had opened the door and was curious to see what would flow out.

Sometimes this took me to a dark and lonely place – a place that I dared not visit in the sober light of control and correctness. There had been literary voyages into vast untapped corners of my sub-conscious that should have stayed unexplored. Like an interesting place that was an "experience", but you wouldn't go back. A "Ping-Pong" bar in Bangkok where the extraction of Ping-Pong balls from the tired vagina of a bored and drugged-up Thai hooker was the tamest of items to be retrieved from her nether regions.

As I said, an "experience", but I didn't want to go back.

Well, once the gates were opened, there was no way to shut them just yet. The words flowed, a current too strong to stem the tide.

I needed a first person narrative in the story...I knew that. The third person worked well for Tobias in the car and it provided me with a challenge. I had never been very strong in the third person. To write in the third person required taking on an outside view, not judgmental but certainly more journalistic. To be impartial and objective – less personal but still connected. That was my challenge.

But, for the 1st person, I needed easy words. Dark words. My mind was already open to the thought of someone paralyzed, or unable to communicate normally. My mind thumped, my brain jumped around inside my skull – smashing into the bony plates.

Visions of words filled me when I closed my eyes, ricocheting through my consciousness like a pinball in an endless game. Nothing could escape, pent up anger, guilt, frustration and remorse. How that eats a soul from within when it has no means of escape – these things devour their creator. Patricide by debilitation – I understood the pain, the suffering. The self-imposed exile.

I zoned out and wrote as the words floated – my eyes closed and I typed...

The frustration I feel...

I've never felt so impotent, so useless.

Read: Colby is a sack of bones.

Useless bones, broken bones - bones that don't fit any more. Some of my bones have disappeared. Some were surgically removed, some were ripped from me in the violence that turned me into this vacant pile of undead flesh that can never scream again.

I wonder what happened to my lower legs.

I don't mean this as a question to explain why the appendages were no longer attached to the rest of my body - I know what caused that. I know why I am a double amputee - I want to know what happened to them after they were removed from their host.

Where are my legs?

The left one was torn off by the destructive power of shredded metal and heat...that much I do know. I vaguely remember the agony and incredulity of this in some dark recess of my mind. This is a place that harbours all manner of real and imagined horrors - just lately the real ones have been shocking the hell out of me. And, in my current state, it's the only place I have been able to visit to escape the reality of my predicament.

My right leg was so badly messed up that amputation in the hospital was the only option - even I could have told the doctors that, when I saw the mangled meat that used to be my legs.

So? Where are they?

If I had a gall stone removed, they'd give it to me in a little jar as a keepsake of the evolving rock that had grown within me over time. But I have no such souvenir of my severed legs.

No toe on a key ring.

No metatarsal bottle opener.

No chopsticks buffed out of my fibulae.

I would have loved a fridge magnet made out of a fragment of patella forever encased in amber, stuck onto a magnet and then placed on the refrigerator to hold down my bills.

But nothing...bupkiss.

I sat up in the bed, hospital white surrounds me. I came up with a name for this colour: "Institution White." I'm going to contact Dulux and get that patented.

The white is punctuated with machinery - plugs and clips in the walls are linked to a variety of digital monitors with orange leads that laconically link life to the living; and the barely living. I used to be one of those - the barely living that is. I struggled with the demons that threatened to take me away so that I could return to this realm as the remnants of Colby Surat.

In my head, those dark places hold the key and the reason why it was that I fought so hard to come back. From what I can recall, the urge to simply give up and take the one-way voyage that presented itself to me was very strong indeed. But I resisted - maybe I had glimpsed what lay ahead and that was enough to convince me to keep fighting?

If so, how bad must it have been if it was worse than this?

This "life" I have isn't a life any more.

Read: Colby is a skin full of useless neurons and synapses - misfiring where they shouldn't, firing where they can't.

Phantom pain - that's what they call it. When an amputee feels an itch on a severed limb, that's called phantom pain. A sensation in a part of the body that has been removed can also be caused by spinal injury. Well, I am lucky because I have both of those causes and that would explain why there is a tickle in my feet that I can't scratch.

Where are my fucking legs?

All I want to have is those useless smashed fetlocks back in my possession so I can scratch the arch of each foot. Ever had a scratch you can't reach? Yeah? Well, multiply that my 1000 and that's how it felt.

((Severed foot + annoying itch) x 2) x 1000 = me.

Read: Colby is less than he should be.

My eyes took several days to adapt to this place and the sights I have seen. My mind took longer to adjust to what it processed. Even though I knew that my legs were gone from above the knee, it still took some time for my mind to get used to seeing me sit up in bed without the two long lumps under the covers stretch away from my body. For ages I sat there looking at stumpy protuberances that ended abruptly after leading away from my withered torso.

Abbreviated ambulation - that was my future.

My stumps are regularly tended to and I feel sorry for the young nursing student who, a few days ago, removed the staples from the wounds after four weeks. The seepage has all but ceased, but when the kid removed the metal clamps that helped hold my flesh together as it knitted, some fluid was inevitable.

I could see him feel sorry for me.

I felt sorry for him.

Two saps feeling sorry for each other when I was certain both of us detested this. We both wished we were somewhere else, that this was happening to someone else.

At least, I knew I did.

Physical injuries heal, mental ones do not.

Not ever.

There is no "closure".

There is no means for me to escape other than within myself, to parts of my mind that normally I would never visit. These are the recesses that store bad dreams or traumatic details - the memory mechanisms that mask reality to protect the rest of me from the truth. Everyone has these things and few ever have the opportunity to dig around in there like I do.

It helps me form my theory about coma patients.

There are comas that are short term - man-made ones that are usually described as "induced comas". This is the state of unconsciousness that is used to protect the rest of the body from stress and improve rehabilitation in the short term. Sports injuries, a fight in a nightclub, sometimes a heart attack...these are the comas that are just like a long sleep. These are good comas.

I am talking about bad comas.

Naughty comas that do not allow the sufferer to awaken.

There is a reason why these comas last for months, or years. The mind is away, it's not there anymore. It visits the dark recesses within itself, reliving the trauma that lead to the situation in the first place. It learns the real truth. Not the abbreviated, adulterated, edited, condensed, abridged version of the truth that consciousness has the temerity to perpetrate as reality. It learns the "director's cut" version of the truth. Unedited, unadulterated, full-scale, high-impact, no holds barred.

And it doesn't like what it sees.

It tries to comprehend the horror of the past and the pain of the future. Some minds desperately want to comprehend this trauma but cannot do so - these are the hopeless cases. These are the ones that are destined to remain in comas forever - or at least until someone turns off the machines. Then there are the minds that don't want to wake up - they don't want to drag this knowledge into the conscious realm because they know the impact of this experience.

These are the comas that are the real concern. The recalcitrant coma - the difficult, stubborn, anti-authoritarian coma that simply snubs its virtual nose at medicine and refuses to wake up.

It is also an altruistic coma - protecting its owner from more pain.

Unfortunately, I'm not so lucky.

In my case, my mind saw the impact of metal on metal. It saw glass slashing, plastic ripping, bones breaking, skin tearing. It saw pain and suffering. It saw misfiring nerves, severed fibres that cannot grow back - synapses too large to bridge. It saw a future where I was a veritable vegetable, where I could comprehend but not reply. My mind went into the dark places of itself and still decided that this was better than dying.

And that was why I sit in this hospital bed desperately needing to scratch an itch that doesn't exist.

My speech hasn't returned and I was told it isn't likely to either. "Aphasia," they call it.

" _Temporary", they say._

" _Possibly treatable", they tell me._

It has been several months yet the progress has been non-existent. I can hear and understand them perfectly well even though they think I can't. There are doctors and nurses, surgeons and neurosurgeons, all manically discussing whether or not this Aphasia includes an inability to comprehend and understand - or is it simply affecting my articulation?

Or is it simply trauma-induced Aphasia that will dissipate over time as the memory fades and recedes.

Let me tell you now...the memory never recedes.

There's no "closure".

Time does not heal all wounds.

Read: Colby is scarred for life.

They think I would get better over the passage of time because I would start to forget the trauma - the desecration of my body. They think that I just need time to recuperate and recover from the physical injuries and that time, coupled with the increasing physical health, would help reduce the memories of that fateful day.

They are full of shit.

Yet I have no means to tell them this.

Inside I am screaming at them, denouncing each rubbish theory as the biggest load of crap I'd ever heard. Their hubris, their arrogance...it drips off their white coats and aesthetically draped stethoscopes like molasses. It sticks to everything they touch and it makes me sick. They couldn't be told. I have no means of communication, no way of telling them.

Until last week.

Now therapy is more interesting.

# Casualty of Life

As I typed away, I consumed more than the prescribed amount of Panadol. I followed through with some Nurofen and topped off my recovery with two glasses of Berocca. But the only effective hangover cure was time.

As my head thumped away, the pulsing of my cranial blood vessels were like a receding drum beat on a long fade-out. My fingers typed furiously, unaware of the world around me. The pain in my skull, caused by alcohol poisoning and increasing blood pressure, niggled and nipped at me, biting into my receptors but my masking drugs fought it away. It was sub-conscious – free-falling in a way. I had no idea if this purging of thought was even going to be any good, or if it would even be accepted. I had no goal, no plan, no idea of how this book was going to end – or even how it would start really.

Once I understood that, then I could accept it.

Maybe it was a metaphor for life?

Life...now there's a concept.

My instinctual malaise crept in again, hindering and hounding me. It was what held me back on so many occasions and now it was having another crack at me. Sowing the seeds of doubt, of criticism, of negativity.

It was at moments like these that my wife would rescue me. Tina would prop me up when I was a flagging, flaccid remnant of a once proud pennant of ability. She provided the wind that billows my sails, drove me on, made the whole journey worthwhile.

I shuddered at the thought of that never happening again.

Terror.

Thinking about this threatened to derail me into despair – I had to try. I owed it to her. The lost time, the memories encased within an impenetrable prison, they usually followed such thoughts. I wasn't sure if I was escaping anything at all.

I re-read the Chapter from Colby's point of view, changing very little. I noticed the similarities with him and me – an emotional cripple writing as a physical cripple. Both of us victims of accidents.

Both of us casualties of life.

I looked at my watch and realized I was late for the meeting with Adrian. He was used to my tardiness, accepted this as part of the enigma that I unconsciously espoused and overtly detested – yet another reason for my loathing. I kidded myself with an approximate rendition of suitable attire and grooming and then set off, knowing that I would be almost an hour late.

My agent, the ever patient Adrian Courtenay, sipped on his Macchiato. We were sitting in a coffee shop in West Perth at 2.30PM on a Wednesday afternoon – don't ask me which week or month because they were all a bit of a blur. I was acutely aware of how I looked:

Run down.

Unkempt.

Alcoholic.

Bohemian.

Womanizer.

I was all of these at once – a romantic notion of the artist at full speed. It was like I was determined to fulfill every idiosyncrasy of the desperate novelist – misunderstood, misinterpreted, misanthropic. I was a walking stereotype.

I was not completely oblivious to how I looked and I carried off chic-tramp quite well. I welcomed the self-imposed prison of spiraling health, aware of the irony that this jail was indeed some form of escape. What I knew, deep down, was that this outward expression was simply a manifestation of my inherent desire to fuck things up in life – a self-destructive masochistic tendency that I had always had.

Occupation was irrelevant – I was always going to end up in this place. Life determined the path I took to get there.

And I was certainly out of kilter with my surroundings on this day – an environment that only a few years before I inhabited with corporate arrogance. In the years I worked as a design engineer for an architectural firm, I lurked these trendy streets, devouring expensive coffee at impromptu street-side meetings, necking cider and Semillon after 5PM at hipster wine bars, mixing with the beautiful men (all side-parts and beards) and the nubile young women with their barely there clothing and unattainable sensuality.

But I looked out of sync with the world in the cafe this morning. My three-day growth was closer to a three-week growth – decidedly non-hipster. I guessed I was two unshaven days away from completing the look of a bum.

"I know what you are saying Adrian," I said and took a sip of the Cappuccino, milky froth sticking to my moustache. "I am starting to get my shit together – I really am. I have started on something, but I'm just not ready to show you yet."

"You know it doesn't need to be finished. Just show me what you have and we can go from there."

Adrian actually did care about me – not only because I was his meal ticket, but we had a genuine friendship as well. At least, I was pretty sure we did. I suppose most people might think the same of their agents – those who have them – and that might just be the sign of a good agent, rather than an actual friendship.

However, he looked uncomfortable here with me today though. His plaid waistcoat made him look bloated, like he was stuffed inside his skin. The business shirt (buttoned all the way to the collar) and his tie rode up his chest as he sat down, pushing on his neck and accentuating his double chin. It was a warm day, too hot for the pretension of a waistcoat – hence Adrian looked flushed, his face ruddy and the beads of sweat that formed under his eyes made him look nervous/shifty.

Although not totally lucid or in tune with anyone else other than myself, I could still notice his discomfort. He had been there through the dark times and he knew some of my debauchery that had followed. The decline of my recent behaviour was not fully known to all, but Adrian knew more than most. He did deserve something from me. And I could see that he cared.

"It's about a guy who has a car accident," I started to tell him. "He goes to therapy and meets others who have had accidents. The therapist also has some extra-curricular activities with a group he's involved in where they have sex whilst crashing cars. That's about as far as I have gone so far...actually, I haven't even gotten that far really. I'm two chapters in, but I think they're okay so far."

"Sounds a bit like 'Crash' by JG Ballard," Adrian offered. It never ceased to amaze me the depth of his pop culture knowledge.

"It's meant to," I offered, not knowing where this sentence was going to take me.

The truth is, I had written two chapters (I think so anyway – the Colby Chapter, free-formed as it was through a half-drunk, half-sick haze of inspiration, perspiration and intoxication, may well become Chapter 2) and I had no idea where it was going. This was 'winging-it-101' right here. I was free-styling on the spot, opening up my head to see what would come out.

"Well, whatever it's about," Adrian continued, "we will need to see something in the next month or so otherwise the publisher is likely to cancel the deal. They want to follow up pretty quickly but the longer it takes, the less likely they will do so."

He was right and I knew it. Despite my demons, my addictions, my weaknesses, I knew that I had a commitment to come good on the deal. At this point in the process I was certain that I had nothing to give them, the daunting task of providing the first few chapters was only slightly less intimidating than sobriety.

But there was a story in there somewhere I could feel it.

I had no idea how long I sat there silent as I let Adrian's words sink into me, like water slowly permeating a membrane. They seeped in, nourishing me, inspiring me. He didn't want to break the silence, but I had entered "The Zone" – a virtual reality that he knew, only too well, not to pull me from.

Eventually I grunted something – a mixture of begrudging acknowledgment and acquiescence.

"Anyway Michael, I'll leave you to it," Adrian replied brightly, in victory. "You know what they want. Personally though, take a fucking shower will you? You look like a bum." He threw down $20 on the table, always the excessive tipper, and left.

That was the last detail I recalled. My mind wandered into the darkness despite the omniscient glare of the West Australian sunshine. I smelled coffee, I sensed humanity around me, but I became an island.

# Closure

Phrases popped into my skull.

Was it good luck to have survived an horrific accident? Or bad luck to end up a shell of your former self?

Was this a question for my Colby character, or for myself?

There is no closure.

That was certainly true for me – time, chemicals, debauchery...nothing ever closed the wounds.

I saw an elderly gent at a small "table-for-one", reading the paper and drinking tea. I wondered why he was alone. Could he be my next character? I got out my pen and paper and began to write:

Time in the room listening to the other stories, talking through their pain/loss/grief etc.... Tobias saw himself in so many of these people, these hapless victims. He saw them blame everyone and everything before themselves. He saw them lash out in despair and anger at what had happened to them.

He saw selfish.

He saw pain.

He saw himself - so much clearer now.

Perhaps, for him, that was the deliverance he would receive in this room for VRTs - Victims of Road Trauma.

The word "salvation" flashed in front of him.

His reverie was cut short as he noticed the monotonous murmur of the voice to his left suddenly stop. Silence crashed into the room as Harry Higham stopped talking - the drone-like speech ceasing suddenly as he broke down in tears, cupping his face in his oversized hands. His loose-fitting cardigan bunched up at the waist, a flabby belly hung low above the baggy trousers – his flesh heading south on his frame as he aged. Harry's shoulders bobbed up and down with the sobs and Tobias could hear him struggle to get in enough air to breath in between wails. He had been talking, again, about his wife who was killed by a drunk driver two years ago.

For some people, time did not heal the wounds.

For some people, time exacerbated the wounds.

It opened them up, poured salt on them and then washed it away with vinegar.

Harry was one such soul. Each month that went by, he felt the loss of Teresa more and more. Harry had told them, between blubbering and sobs, that each day/week/month was harder than the last because he was further away from her. He felt Teresa fading in his memory, her face slightly more blurry than it was last week.

" _It's like I need glasses for my heart," he had once said. "Terri gets blurrier and more distant - like my eyesight is failing me. I feel like I just need to put on a stronger set of spectacles and she would be back in focus again. But I can't. Her smile is fading and I don't want to let her go."_

" _Maybe she wants you to," replied Carlton, the facilitator of the group. "Maybe this is her way of saying that it's time you went on with your life - the next phase of your life that is."_

The facilitator – this guy was the key. I stopped writing and shook the cramp out of the muscles in my hand. I waved over the waiter and ordered another coffee and a bottle of water – Adrian's generosity shouting me an extra drink.

Adrian – my friend, confidant and parasite. He had just entered the story.

Carlton's bald head reflected the cold harsh light of the fluorescent tubes above, his thick-rimmed designer glasses perched on his nose and angled down, needing constant adjustment. His ubiquitous waist-coast – his shtick, his personal chutzpah – was tightly fastened revealing the lean waist, the broad chest, defined shoulders.

Okay, so technically NOT an accurate description of Adrian, but I was using literary license.

Today Carlton had several Band-Aids on his right hand, congealed blood darkening the central pad on the plastic strips. His left eye was blood-shot, dried blood slowly fading behind the cornea, masked by the puffiness that betrayed the previous injury. Tobias noticed Carlton's limp when he entered earlier, saw how conscious Carlton was trying to hide it.

" _But I don't want to forget her," bleated Harry. "I still love her."_

" _And you always will," said Carlton, leaning forward towards the middle of the circle they made. "Theresa knows that - and she also knows that you need to move on with your life and create a new chapter. One that doesn't have her in your life, but one that will always have her in your heart."_

Tobias could see that Harry would never get over the loss of his wife - and the time in here was only making it worse. Yet, every week, he came back with the hang-dog look on his face. Tobias did feel sorry for Harry, a guy who was certainly an innocent victim of road trauma. There weren't too many of those in here.

Their group varied from four or five in some weeks, to twelve in other weeks. Some people only came once or twice, but others were there each week - the hard-core group of Harry, Colby and Tobias were constant. Some weeks, people would show up, say nothing, sit on the edge of the circle and then, halfway through, get up and leave.

There were a variety of responses he saw with newcomers.

Some would cry the moment they said their names. Some would yell and scream - all anger and vitriol. Some said nothing and never returned.

The term "awkward silence" took on a new meaning in this room.

Tobias had come to terms with pain and suffering. He knew that he had been lucky to survive that wreck with as little damage as he had. He was now at the stage in his recovery where he felt he didn't have a right to be there, in therapy, anymore. These people had things a hell of a lot worse than he did. Theirs were scars that ran so deep they'd never heal. No amount of bleating, or sobbing, or lashing out would ever be enough to return them to their former glories.

His time here was limited, he knew that. And, apparently, so too did Carlton.

On this night, Carlton looked at Tobias as if to say: "Why are you still here?"

Tobias knew that his time was up - he was just about over this. If he stayed too much longer, he feared Carlton might think he was only attending because he had some sick fetish about car accidents and their victims.

He planned to tell Carlton, at the end of this night, that it was his last night here.

And then she walked in.

Who would "she" be?

That was already determined...I just didn't know it yet.

My coffee...cold.

And the old man...gone.

# Vivid Whispers

The days became fuzzy, like the air had fur on it. I couldn't see clearly, images blurred and distorted, forming new visions and deceiving me. The sounds I heard were muffled – esoteric.

I was lying in my bed, the sun rudely peeking through my window under the blind like a persistent stalker. Ghosts abounded – the spectres of sounds hounded me as I tried (in vain) to get a grip upon reality. My mind recalled a body, a woman, a vision in my head. Her picture so clear, so lucid...yet her name was a mystery. I heard her speak and the sound was an aural elixir, soothing and sedating.

The room spun, the bare globe in the ceiling appeared to run around like a mouse on speed. In the corner of the room I could feel myself squashing into the cornice – perched up high like a spider patiently waiting for its prey. I clung onto the sheer walls, spreading my limbs for stability. I could taste the paint of the ceiling, feel the rasp of the edge of the cornice.

Below me was myself – supine and snoring. I lowered myself down, hovering above my form.

Her words, an incoherent balm, rang in my ears. Her vision formed in my head.

I recalled the feeling, the out-of-body. I smelled her perfume, tasted her scent in the air. I could feel the warmth of her neck and the sweet aroma of her body and I breathed her in.

Or did I?

Now that I was waking, I could see I was alone. But reality had been with me, I was sure of it. I had never been so certain – it simply _had_ to have happened. Didn't it?

Or was I simply remembering my words – the sounds and visions an implant. Were they created in an alternate state of consciousness and, therefore, in the lucidity of sobriety – or rapidly approaching it anyway – they manifested themselves as reality?

Nothing felt right and I doubted myself. I wasn't even sure if I was here right now – perhaps _this_ is the dream and the reality is waiting for me elsewhere?

I picked up the typed sheets of paper, unsure if they were mine or whether I had procured them from places unknown. As I read, I realized I was re-reading.

Remembering and re-remembering.

Out of sync – that's for certain.

Yes – I was out of sync. Nothing matched up. I read on:

Her svelte, size 8 figure seemed untouched by the ravages of road trauma, devoid of the pain of torn muscles, broken bones and eviscerated skin. Carlton noticed the bottom of a tattoo poking out from below her white, mid-riff baring tank top - spidery black legs crept across her taut belly on the skin above the tight black jeans she wore. Later he would see the lace-thin tendrils of more tattoos snake their way up the back of her neck and into her hair.

Short blonde hair, messy, a couple of pinkish streaks that punctuated her designer-mess of a hairstyle. She was a late 80's style uber-punk - more Cyndi Lauper than Lady Gaga.

Retro chic perfected.

She was, by far, the most interesting thing that happened to him today.

This group was about done for him. There were less and less showing up each week and he hadn't seen any decent prospects in a long time. Carlton felt that maybe Tobias would be a candidate, but the guy simply continued to withdraw. He wondered why Tobias bothered to show up at all - perhaps there was a voyeuristic streak in him? That he took pleasure in reliving other people's pain and suffering. Carlton hoped that was it - it would make Tobias a lot more interesting.

And it would also make him much more likely to be a candidate.

Colby wheezed away in his wheelchair, computerized bleeps and pings created a science-fiction backdrop. Once he finally received his computerised voice, a complex software program that turned text into sound, he was at least able to communicate. The conversation was stilted but at least it wasn't one-sided anymore.

But these two were not what Carlton was after - these were genuine victims. These were the people that he had resolved to help in a moment of weakness that he now recognized as altruism. He was not a counselor, or a therapist, or qualified in anything other than an ability to bullshit and talk people into anything.

He talked the doctors into letting him hold a VRT support group here.

He talked some of his previous "clients" into helping him fulfill his desires, passions that need sating through manipulation, persuasion and voyeurism. It was never enough for Carlton to simply participate, he had to pull the strings and watch his marionettes take on a life of their own – all the while Carlton dictated their actions.

Then the sexy interloper noticed Harry was still clearing the tears from his eyes. "I hope I haven't interrupted a 'moment' here?"

" _No, that's fine," replied Carlton. "Harry was telling us about his feelings of loss after his wife was killed in an accident. It's good to get these things out."_

" _Is it?" She asked, almost accusatory._

He wondered if she was here voluntarily.

" _So, what's the go anyway?" She asked. "How does this work?"_

" _Well, most people tell us their names and why they are here. Sometimes they also say what they hope to get out of being here."_

" _I thought names were forbidden or something?"_

" _It's not AA - we are here to discuss what has happened and each of us helps the others to deal with the hand that life has dealt."_

" _Life? How secular of you. In the past, people would have said 'God" instead of 'Life'. I guess you can't bring religion in I suppose?"_

" _I prefer not, but if it helps you open up and deal with things, then that's fine."_

" _It doesn't and it won't... I was just saying."_

Oh yes, thought Carlton, definitely out of sync with the group.

The dynamic changed as soon as "She" entered. The fact that she was a woman, and an attractive one as well, changed the mood/vibe instantly. Tobias lowered his head, avoiding eye contact and clearly intimidated by her.

Colby sat in his catatonic state - his face suspended in mid emotion. His fingers remained resting lightly on the keyboard, the tips nervously wandering over random keys. This was his way of not knowing what to say.

" _Well," began Carlton, "perhaps you could start by telling us your name and why you are here?"_

Ice-breaker question and hopefully she could help him out - bring the life back into this room of sad broken cases.

She was confident and precocious, that much Carlton could tell. The way she walked into the room, grabbed a spare chair casually and dragged it into the circle showed him that she was used to being the centre of attention. With her cut-off tank-top, tight black jeans and Doc Martin boots, she looked more foot-soldier than princess - yet she was certainly enjoying the attention she garnered. Her make-up was simple, basic and not too heavy - dark mascara was applied lightly so as to emphasize her eyes, rather than disguise them. She wore no visible mask - hers was much harder to discover.

Her confidence stalled as she contemplated an answer to Carlton's simple request. She was working out an answer, one that would invariably be bullshit – but very convincing bullshit nonetheless. He knew a manipulator when he saw one.

He knew his own kind.

It was instant - a subconscious acknowledgement of a kindred spirit. This was someone that Carlton quickly identified with. Her story, and her motivations, would follow. But, as it stood now, Carlton was falling in love.

I stopped reading and realized that I had forgotten how to breathe. I inhaled, filling my lungs with sweet fresh air, and exhaled strongly as I tried to avoid dizziness. I was caught somewhere between shock and déjà vu.

I knew this phantom – but somewhere, in the back of my mind only. She existed on paper like the description of a ghost – but I was sure she was real as well. Somewhere in the ether of reality, which I occasionally frequented, there was a woman just like this but I had no idea where to find her. Upon reading these words again I realized that they barely did justice to the memory of her that I had.

The memory evoked feelings of lust and satisfaction. My penis tingled and threatened to work as I opened up to the thought of this woman. My haze, produced by alcohol, perpetuated by addiction, dulled my shame and guilt.

My poor wife...if only she knew the truth of this.

I knew what she would have said but my selfishness and arrogance drove her admonishment to the back of my brain. My self-defence mechanisms kicked in.

Ignore it Michael, I thought. Do not burden yourself with such thoughts.

I put the papers down – I always printed hard copies of my work as if the palpable feeling of paper on skin told me that this was reality and it was actually happening. I re-enforced my fears.

The woman – the character – she would be called something exotic. A name that I would never have heard before. Something that sounds like no one I have ever known.

Desiree.

Yes, that's it...Desiree.

She leapt off the page like a hologram, yet I could feel her touch. I could feel her skin twitch slightly under the soft pressing of my hands on her waist. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my ear as she nuzzled into me.

I had never had such a vivid animation of a character before. She felt real, like she was in the room with me. It was if her presence was still here even though her body had gone.

With the papers face down on the bed, it was like the door had closed after her leaving. Her fragrance still filled the air – the space left behind after her body had left still held reminiscences of physical being.

She was Marla Singer. She was Emma Woodhouse. She was Katniss Everdeen.

Had I made her up? Or had I simply written a biographical description?

Or, more to the point, had I just re-named someone else's character?

My head pounded and threatened me with the punishment of a hangover. I knew this was not a medicine I needed. My mind reveled in the perplexity of memory – the confusion created when my consciousness couldn't decide what was real and what was imaginary. I wasn't sure if I had made these things up, or written down an experience. Was it fact or autobiography?

My cloak of denial awaited me as I staggered to the fridge and found a half full bottle of Chardonnay from yesterday afternoon.

The clock read 11.30AM

The bottle read...something blurry.

Lunch.

#  Temporary Relief

Somewhere in my unruly apartment a digital chirrup was emanating from under a pile of unwashed clothes. The muffled sound of its persistent and monotonous invasion into my perfectly formed hangover was amplified as consciousness began to take form.

The volume increased like the segue between songs, amping up to a point where I could no longer ignore it. The "chirrup-chirrup-chirrup" sound of the phone's relentless and insipid call to attention smashed around inside my skull – like a two year old child with a hammer.

I sat up, instantly turning all I could see into an unfocussed puddle. Images swerved and formed, meshing and moulding into shapes of Dali-esque disfigurement. My stomach swirled and pitched, rocking and rolling within my skin as my gastric sphincter struggled to contain the rebellious juices beneath. The muscles in my abdomen ached – evidence of a previous bout of heavy vomiting in the not too distant (but unrecognisable) past.

The room had an odour...no, wait, not an odour...a fragrance. A perfume! Yes, it hung in the air sickly sweet like an invisible fog. I could taste it in my mouth and I knew that smell from somewhere.

It smelled like desire.

It smelled like danger.

It smelled like something I wanted again.

My mind wandered to the past to try and dig out the memory that belonged to that smell – why did it invoke such strongly sexual urges in me? I couldn't remember the clearly violent vomitus eruption that had recently occurred as evidenced by my strained abdominal muscles and acid-tasting mouth, yet that smell instantly took me to a past that I wanted again, and again, and again.

The sweetness was my heroin – it was my addiction. It was not a drug of choice – I did not choose to be addicted by this aroma, but I was glad I was.

But the obstinate phone would not give up. It invaded and dominated even my addiction. I wanted that smell so very badly, but I had to answer the phone because the bloody thing was never going to stop.

I tripped, shuffled and fell onto something soft – or someone soft? I couldn't tell. My eyes and stomach worked in tandem to disorient me – both refusing to work in the normal way. I followed the sound of the phone, removing items of clothing from the couch as the sound became clearer.

Then I answered it and it was Lee Holbrook.

As usual, he began this conversation halfway through. This was a disconcerting enough practice when I was fully lucid, but, in my fragile and confused state at this time, it was downright bewildering.

"So there I was, right, with this girl in her apartment. We're on the 15th floor of this place, it was about 2AM, and I knew that we were about to start fucking." Lee's voice picked up a notch as he settled in to explain his tryst – a night of debauchery that would be undoubtedly embellished, but entertaining none-the-less.

I've known Lee since we were kids, two pre-teen rat-bags who were always in and out of trouble. I was the shy one who tagged along, enamoured by his charm and swagger. Lee was, a charismatic character – part James Bond, part Keith Richards. Lee's the guy that gets away with things no-one else ever could.

Many times he had described, in minute detail, his blow-by-blow encounters with a hapless, naïve young thing. Sometimes the stories were just so fantastic that they couldn't possibly be true – except, they almost always were.

"We worked together – she was an office temp and as soon as I saw her, I knew that I had to have a crack right? I wouldn't normally hit on a chick from the office, but she was only a temp and would be gone in a few weeks so I reckoned that she was fair game. A few of the lads in the office had noticed her too and there was no way I was going in there after some of those manky bastards, so I decided to try and get in first."

I wanted to tell him that it was God-awful o'clock and could he please fuck off until a more respectable hour of the day? I heard it come out of my throat like a moan from the undead.

Unperturbed and probably deaf to my feeble protestations, Lee continued:

"I took her out to dinner to 'The Aviary' and few drinks afterwards at the roof-top bar, and we got along pretty well. She's gorgeous mate, I tell ya."

Even through my semi-conscious haze, I knew the rest before he even said it – she was tall, long black hair, slender body, great "C-Cup" boobs. I even knew her eye colour: hazel, with a hint of green. Everyone has a type they prefer and this was Lee's.

I sat down on my pile of unwashed clothing, noticing that the sweet smell of my addiction had disappeared as lucidity descended and been replaced by a dankness that was reeking out of me. As Lee continued, I felt the pores in my skin leaking alcohol and excess – my depravity was seeping out of me.

The absence of Tina was palpable, evidenced not only by my disheveled and despairing disposition but also by the filth with which I had chosen to abide. My neglect extended beyond the emotional, my dependence protracted further than assurance. A blind man could see my loneliness, smell my decline, sense my misery.

I had no time to dwell – a thank-you for small graces. Lee continued:

"Mick? Are still listening? She's actually a pretty funny chick, great sense of humour. Well, of course, I'm using all my good stuff on her – more lines than a prawn trawler as you know! She lives in the city, so we went back to hers. Her joint was one of those apartments up in East Perth, has a view out towards the WACA and Gloucester Park. Her folks are loaded and they rent it for her. A top gaff. Anyway, we get inside the door and it's fuckin' on!"

He's getting worked up now and I just know what's coming – a pornographic "blow-by-blow" of the entire tableau. I had often told him that I didn't really want to know the intimate details, but he was more inclined to give me even more detail if I went down that path again.

I'm sure that there must be some psychological reason for why he felt that he must tell me this stuff. Was it to brag? Was it an ego thing? Or was it acceptance he was seeking? In more sober moments of reflection I have thought that maybe his re-telling of the stories was his reconciliation – an assuaging of the guilt he felt when he indulged in these trysts. He never held girlfriends very long and, even when he did have a relationship, he was always looking for a reason to break it off whilst cheating at the same time.

But Lee was also my best friend. I think. To be honest, in my current state of health, I wasn't 100% sure if I had any friends. Perhaps this was the call I needed most. I realized Lee had continued talking – my reverie was completely non-existent to him.

"She was gorgeous and she's all over me like a rash. I'm thinking that I should just have my wicked way and then voom! I'm outta there like rat from a sinking ship. The last thing I needed was to stay the night and then have one of those awkward goodbyes the next day; then more awkwardness at the office...nah, just a quick drunken shag and then get out of there. Thank God, she was up for the same thing!

"Anyway, the kit starts coming off and were going at it. I've got her sitting on the breakfast bar, legs in the air and I'm chokka-block up there. She's goin' off and I'm having a great time. I look out the windows and there this bloke in the next building copping a blow job from _his_ missus! I couldn't believe it! I'm going for it with this chick and he's getting a blow job from some other tart!"

"You should have waved to him," I said trying to picture the surreal pornographic scene – a virtual orgy separated by 50 feet of air and glass.

"I did! I gave him the thumbs up and he looked over at me, raised a bottle of beer, and waved back. A wonderful moment. The chick I was with didn't notice (and his missus was in no position to see anything), so we both just smiled and continued on."

I thought about this for a minute and as fantastic as this might seem – as contrived as it appeared – it would not have surprised me at all if this wasn't a 100% accurate recollection of events that night.

"You know," I said, "somewhere there's a bloke telling his mate the exact same story."

Lee laughed briefly and then replied: "Yeah Mick, but in HIS story, the other bloke had an enormous cock!"

The line went dead – Lee always knew when to exit.

Fifteen minutes later I was curled up on the floor of my shower, surrounded by water. My head thumped, my body ached. My bones felt like splintering as I understood that maybe this was what sobriety was like...except I think I was probably still pissed.

If being sober felt like this, if straight people experienced this torture, then I didn't want it. Give me the alcohol, the Xanax, the cocaine, the Meth, the dope...give me all of that to avoid this level of agony that speared through my body like a javelin.

I didn't understand this pain as my motor skills (or lack thereof) assured me that alcohol still had control of this vessel called my human form. Lee's call may not have sobered me up in a physical sense, but mentally I needed it. I needed the laugh, the juvenile stupidity of it all.

As much as that mysterious aroma invoked vague and distorted memories of a desired place and state, so too had Lee's called reminded me of a not to distant past where I was happy.

The memory of happiness, of enjoyment without chemicals...that's the memory that hurts.

That hurt more than the come down from the gear, the detox from the alcohol. It filled me with more fear than living ever did.

Tina invaded my thoughts and the dagger in me twisted further. These were the times she would nurse me to health, provide me with the strength to go on, to power through life. Without her here, and with the effects of masking agents and chemicals slowly relinquishing their hold on my reality, my hole sunk further.

And as I sat on the floor of the shower, the tears camouflaged in the water, my sides ached as I convulsed with the agony of fear. I had nothing to throw up so my stomach simply spasmed as my body tried to reject the poison that I had inflicted upon it. My sobbing and my dry reaching made me feel like I would split open.

Slowly I managed to get some air into me and calmed myself down. I had no idea if this was my low point or not.

Later that day I found this. I had no idea when I wrote it but it didn't seem to bear any resemblance to what I had started.

Ya fucking bastards! What are you doing to me? Why must I have to suffer this wretched and terrible fate? I didn't deserve this ya pricks, so why put it all on me?

And she didn't deserve it either – she had nothing to do with it. If you wanted to punish someone, if you wanted to take it out on someone, then fucking take it out on me. She was innocent and...oh....

I get it...she was simply the tool – the vessel within which you could inflict the pain and suffering upon me. You used her, you broke her, so you could make me suffer. There were other ways, you didn't need to do that!

CUUUNNNTTTS!!!

If I find youse, I'll fuckin' gut yas!

This was typed and printed out – the sheet lying on top of the printer. I checked my laptop but there was no file or document with anything like this in it. But it certainly looked like it had been written and printed here. The prose bore no resemblance to me at all.

But I knew whom the author was talking about.

#  The Seduction of Proposal

"Come over, now" The text said.

"I have 2CU." The text said.

I didn't think I knew who sent this.

Then I read the first lines of my next chapter:

" _Come over, now" The text said._

" _I have 2CU." The text said._

I looked back at the iPhone and the evidence was there in front of me. I re-read the latest chapter of what was subliminally becoming a subconscious autobiography:

It was late but the time didn't matter – Tobias operated on auto-pilot as he controlled his car, driving through the blurred night-scape with a singular vision.

Her.

Desiree.

Lights flashed past him as he drove by electrical super-stores on his way through to the city and the steel tower in which she resided. The dash of the car was a chameleon, switching and flicking from one neon flash to the next, mirroring the external environment as he charged through the night. He had no concept of oblivion, or choice – there was only action and reaction.

She commanded, he followed.

He wiped the sleep from his eyes, ducts leaking tears that obscured his sight, merging objects and distorting distance. His spatial awareness, usually acute, was hampered as he struggled to keep his eyes clear. Grainy, sandy, his eyes itched with each blink as if smearing any foreign objects across his vision, not clearing them. Time was irrelevant – the destination could have been three minutes away, or three days, it would have made no difference to him.

Any distance or time travelled = pain.

The pain of anticipation – the seduction of proposal.

I can see the apartment block in my mind and I wondered if I had been there? I recalled Lee's tale of the girl in the apartment and maybe that was what I could remember?

Desiree's apartment was a glass and steel post-modern style desert, devoid of atmosphere and attraction. Floor to ceiling glass panels showed glimmers of greens and blues as they refracted the lights, low voltage down lights recessed into the stark white ceiling. Chrome mirrors reversed rounded reflections off the framework of furniture – twisted versions of Tobias' face gawped back at him as he noticed their stares, quizzical and astounded.

From the thirteenth floor they could see over half of the city, lights blinking and dotting the darkened landscape. He noticed that the hills outlined only the sporadic spots of illumination, the contours lost in the nightscape. Join the dots, create the topography.

The freeway snaked away to the south, twisting and bending as it hugged the riverbank. Red lights tailed away from Tobias, leaving him in their history and heading out into a future they thought they knew.

Who really knew what their future held anyway?

Towards him, white headlights meandered, lane changes occasional, indicators even more rare. The freeway looked peaceful from up at this height – silently providing a gently wandering thoroughfare for the weary traveller this late at night. The blacktop shone with a yellow hue, reflecting the street lighting that lit the way and kept the night at bay.

No sound penetrated this apartment, the hum of the city, the high-pitched whee-whar of emergency vehicles were the stuff of memory only. Below, on the freeway, he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance weave in and out of the relatively pedestrian traffic as it sped its way to or from an accident somewhere. Perhaps a heart attack, perhaps an overdose? In the quiet of the room, the sense of urgency they wanted to portray was completely lost – the red/blue flashing lights unwittingly provoking a Pavlovian response in Tobias for arousal.

Tobias felt his pulse quicken, his heart rate increase. Breath became shorter and the familiar stirring in his groin returned as he watched the ambulance disappear over a small rise in the road. It was out of site but its revolving lights reflected off the surrounding buildings, a mobile nightclub thundering down the lanes.

" _You feel it too, don't you?" She said, her presence behind him sudden and unexpected. Again she ran her hands under his shirt and onto his bare skin, fingers tweaking his nipples, nails scraping the skin._

The words rung in my head – amnesia broken. Was this a story, or a recollection? I lifted my shirt to see the red track mark welts fading under the hair. I could taste the sweet scent of perfume in my lungs, on my tongue, in my pores. Reading these words made it all come back to me in a flash – the apartment, the glass tower above the mayhem of the city-scape below.

My brain is mush – the level of decadence and indulgence had blurred memories and fantasy, turning each into the other. I couldn't tell if the words were autobiography, diary or even written by someone else. The thought that some mysterious puppet master had written this so that I would play it out did cross my mind – a predetermined fate that my weakened state was helpless to resist.

But the scene was so strongly imprinted in me – a memory that had to be true. The details were what gave it away. And the scent – that perfume that enveloped me in a warm and loving embrace. It was lustful, desiring and dangerous.

And I knew I wanted more.

I stopped reading – if this was a memory and the words were a diarized form of prose, then I would already know the rest of this.

I thought...I remembered. My brain struggled, juggling fragments of reality and creating an ill-fitting jigsaw. Some pieces thought they fitted, but I knew that they were wrong. Then it clicked.

The story gave way to my memory, recent bouts of sobriety had increased the powers of recall. I stopped reading the story and closed my eyes, listening to tale continue in reverie.

I remembered my arousal multiplied as I saw the ambulance rise up the other side of the dale it had disappeared into. The woman tugged firmly at my nipple as the lights increased. This "Desiree" of my memory was vague, an amalgam of drunken trysts and third person recollections from Lee's fantastical hedonism. I had no idea of the girl's name or any discernable detail.

Katrina? Simone? Renae?

She remained incomplete in memory.

Resistance was low – hell, it was futile.

"She" (read: Kate? Bree? Laura?) did not wait for an answer – silence was compliance.

I could smell her scent in the air, my nostrils filled with her perfume, her sweat, her essence. I could hear her voice in my head:

"With every swerve through the thinning traffic, the driver takes more chances, cheating death with each turn of the wheel. He's on the edge of control, the tyres are squealing with each twist of the steering column, each press of the brakes."

I felt my erection mount against the belt of his jeans, busting to be freed. The pressure increased the sensuality. It returned to me after a hiatus that I dared not recall. "Her" (read: Belinda? Angela? Rebecca?) hand caressed my chest and stomach, warm and smooth, spreading their hold.

I think I asked: "Who's in the back of the ambulance? Is it a teenage son of a wealthy doctor who's overdosed on heroin? Or maybe someone had a heart attack whilst driving, careening their car into the fence and coming to rest facing the wrong way?"

"No," she replied. "It's us. You and me – we are in the back of the ambulance and you're inside me. Your cock thrusts in and out as I hold onto your hips, pulling you in deeper and deeper. I feel like you're going to split me apart. Your hips smash into my pelvis, pulling it wider and allowing penetration more violent. You're above me, your arms pinning me down, your breath in my ear."

She took a large breath in, cool air wafting past my neck as she inhaled. Her scent, that addictive airborne elixir, it invaded me once again – clawing its hooks in me and holding me tight. The soft smooth sensuality of her voice continued.

"The ambulance sways left and right, soft suspension bouncing plastic filled bags off the walls of the cabin and onto us. You struggle to hold onto the gurney, your arms straining under the forces that threaten to throw us to the floor of the van. I feel your triceps burning, taking the weight and holding you in place. One of my hands is on your arse, the muscles clenching and relaxing as your passion mounts."

I couldn't be 100% sure those were her words but, as I closed my eyes and transported myself back in time, the transcription became clearer. She continued to whisper.

"I'm as wet as I can be, I can feel the waves coming as you take me to the place I love. Your balls tighten and you explode within me just as my muscles clench with ecstasy. The ambulance arrives at the emergency department as we separate, our fluids still fresh on the gurney. The cabin stinks of sex – the sweet aroma of post-coitus satisfaction that is a tonic for the soul. You can feel it can't you?"

"She" (read: Antoinette? Gabrielle? Kelly?) whispered in my ear, the moisture from her tongue coating the tiny hairs on my flesh. Her sultry growl filled me, consumed all sound receptors...nothing else mattered. The ambulance had disappeared and she leaned against my back, her breasts pressed against me as she ground her crotch into my thigh. Her hands dropped to my belt buckle, the tips of her fingers gently brushing the head of my enlarged penis. Orgasm imminent.

"Look over there," she said and I could see her large plasma screen TV. On it there was footage shot from the side of the freeway. There was no sound, just the grainy black images of the occasional car passing by an accident. I could see people climbing out of an overturned Van – a beat up old Nissan thing that looked a total write-off. Sticking out of the rear of the van was the rear end of some small hatchback car which looked like it had driven straight into the back of the van – invading the cabin and destroying all in its path.

"What's that?" I asked, thinking that it couldn't have been the occupants of the ambulance we had just seen. This looked like it had been filmed some time ago.

"I shot it earlier tonight – the accident happened just before I arrived on the scene. It made me think of you." Her hands rubbed the outside of my jeans and my eyes wanted to close.

"Yeah?"

"Notice – those people getting out of the car? See that guy's cock is still hard?" She rubbed a little harder, I tightened further. "Notice – her breasts glistening in the streetlight? See the small specs of blood on them."

She rubbed harder against me, a sexual grinding that would only end one way. "Notice – they are scrambling for their clothes, one guy is in agony, maybe his arm or shoulder is broken?" Her left hand pressed my balls tighter; I approached the cliff.

"She" (read: Monica? Naomi? Kylie?) knew exactly where I was. "Tell me," she said. "Tell me what you see."

I remembered providing a response.

"I see the people leaving the destroyed vehicles like sperm from a spent cock – spewing raggedly across the scene. They are sexual demons, they were all fucking inside one of those cars I'm sure – the air would smell like sex and petrol and burning rubber. There's a 4WD now, collecting them. They pile in, scooped up, their spent bodies limp and malleable as they contort to get through the doorway and into their getaway car."

Closer...closer...

"And the last one in?" She asked as she pressed one last time.

"I know him!" I exclaimed as I came, my underused penis no longer able to hold off the overwhelming passions she produced. "She" (read: anyone except Tina) moaned in my ear, a small involuntary squeak escaped as well and I thought maybe she had come too.

The sight of the ambulance and the crash scene, the smell of her sex, the aural velvet of her voice in my ear. Her closeness, her sexuality...it was too much.

It was therapy.

I pressed virtual "pause" on my mind, letting the tendrils of nerves shimmer with the electric tones of her unkilled voice on their tips.

I instinctively reached for my erection – the images of my reverie providing me with the turn-on I needed to relive my pent up horniness. I hadn't felt that sexual for a long time...too long.

Before my wife...Tina...

Thoughts of Tina used to promote an erection, visions of our congress a tableau of sensuality that provided me with porn-substitute stimulation. But not any more – Tina used to pop into my head just at a time when she would have in the past, enabling erection and fuelling desire. But now, after all this time, her presence is cold water on the fire.

The erection started to fall as my mind wandered. I _needed_ this! I kept my wrist going as I recalled my words, embellished through memory, forcing Tina into the dark recesses where she had recently resided.

I was so close now, Tina's memory fading and I recalled the gestalt fantasy's touch still firm, pressing my cock against my body, the vein pumping blood and she could feel it's life.

I re-read the manuscript, knowing the ending. I could still taste this woman, this "Desiree". Where and how did I meet her?

And now the memory so real that I had tangible evidence that it had not been fantasy (the text, the welts) – I needed to find this woman. Was she my salvation – or was she the anti-Christ?

In my bewilderment I forgot that I didn't have a headache anymore – the drinking had either decreased to a point where I was not getting the hangovers, or I was so immune to the quantity of consumption that I was permanently pissed and devoid of the capacity for recovery.

Lucidity – or some semblance of it – would give me the answer I needed.

I didn't know where to start looking but I decided to try and backtrack my days. I re-read the manuscript searching for clues.

The accident? The apartment?

Maybe.

Then I remembered leaving the building and feeling the door shut gently behind me and I swore I heard: "Thank you" as it did.

# Memento of Excess

A figure returned to me, appearing like a ghost through the haze that was something o'clock. It had a face, but the features were mangled – a fusion mess of skin and hair. It leered down at me, mumbling and muffled. A sound rumbled through my ears – a familiar sound, a welcome sound.

Over the course of a few seconds, the sound manifested itself as a voice – vocal sounds fighting their way through the treacle thick air that surrounded my percussive skull. The face above me was making the noise, consciousness now gave me an insight into the features of the creature above.

Male.

Familiar.

It was Lee Holbrook.

I had sunk further into the rabbit hole, the barriers of reality had completely disappeared and time itself ceased to exist. I was sure that Lee could see that I wasn't aware if he was old, young, or somewhere in between. But he did know I was alive – my decrepit disposition and resounding hangover reminded him of that.

Déjà vu struck as I recalled my last discussion with Lee. The blurring of the edges of reality, where it melded with fiction, prompted me to wonder: wasn't the phone supposed to ring?

When did that happen? _Did_ it ever happen?

I struggled to remember when, or if, I even spoke to Lee recently. But Lee knew it was two weeks ago.

"Get up you pathetic waste of skin!" Lee barked, trying to shake me from my chemical quasi-coma.

"Whhaaagghhhh?" This was my only possible contribution to what was undoubtedly going to become a one-sided conversation.

"You're a useless shite Mick – have a fucking look at yourself! Lying in your own mess, pissed, stoned and God-knows what else at 11.30AM. It's about time you sorted yourself out and I'm going to have to help you do it."

Lee felt the sting of duplicity as I knew he remembered the many times, dozens probably, where I had sobered him up in the morning, or provided an alibi to whichever poor undeserving girlfriend he was cheating on. The countless times I had followed him from 'having a quiet drink', to a 10 hour binge finishing at 5 in the morning. And now he was berating me – how had it come to this?

Deep down, I knew the answer to this. And so too did Lee – it was why he was here.

If my voice and brain could have synchronised, I might have actually reminded Lee of the hypocrisy. But my sole contribution to the conversation (what there was of one) comprised solely of primordial grunts, vomit and tripping over the coffee table.

Then it all went black.

# The Penny Dropped

Sometime later, Michael was wet – sitting naked on the floor of the shower with Lee on the floor of the bathroom next to him, making sure his best friend hadn't collapsed and drowned in a half inch of water.

Sobriety ensued.

Lee could see the cathartic comprehension of his predicament had hit Michael full force – an emotional punch in the stomach that all addicts get. It was visceral, it was painful. The suddenness and the honesty that flowed immediately after this was always a watershed moment – a weight lifted. And it always carried the suffix 'this time I mean it'.

"I'm fucked mate," Michael blubbered, not knowing where the tears stopped and the water started. "It's like I have this darkness that covers me and forces me down a one-way road...I can't stop, there's no return. Once I start partying, I can't stop. I have to find ways to keep the darkness away, to keep it from choking me to death. I know I'll die without this."

Lee looked at his friend – Michael Forster the famous author. This slide was inevitable, he knew it. He felt sorry for Michael, he wanted Michael to be back to his old self. But he also knew that he never would be.

It used to be that Michael had always been there for Lee when he was younger, in his wild days when he jumped from girl to girl, bed to bed, drug to drug – all in the pursuit of happiness. Hedonism was Lee's mantra, his religion. He had travelled the path that Michael was now trudging through, although Lee's reasons were ingrained within his psyche. Michael was there through circumstance and opportunity.

In rare moments of introspection, Lee wondered what it was about Michael that made him maintain a close friendship with a disrespectful, wild, and loose cannon such as himself. Was it a character flaw in Michael Forster that bound them? Or a subconscious trait in Lee that drew Michael in? Or maybe a bit of both?

In recent times Lee's rambunctious behavior had decelerated – the roles started to reverse between he and his best friend. Approaching mid-40s, Lee was beginning to slow down; his activities curtailed by a lagging libido. He still told Michael his exploits when they happened – only now more embellished and outrageous. He couldn't face telling Mick that he was lucky to get an erection once a week without Cialis.

Lee didn't want his failure to push Mick further down the hole. Lee had seen the effect of Tina on Michael and he knew how hard life had been for his friend lately. Lee's hypocrisy made way for compassion – Michael had always been there for Lee in times of need. Now it was Lee's turn.

Michael blubbered, the words disheveled. "Lee...I'm so sorry mate. I didn't mean for this to happen. I just can't help it sometimes."

Lee said nothing – he figured Michael wouldn't remember anyway. He knew that drunks, like junkies, like any addicts, would say what you want to hear just so you will leave them alone to continue their path to self-destruction. He'd heard it from his mother – he'd heard it from his sister...and now his best mate was feeding him the same lines.

Michael's eyes cleared, he wiped the water away and leaned towards Lee. The clarity returned, just for a moment. "Lee – I'm done. I'm over this once and for all. I'll get this sorted out I swear. I know it's going to kill me and I will stop...I really mean it."

His wet hands meekly held onto Lee's shirt as he pleaded for sincerity. Lee could see the truth – Michael meant it.

Right then...he meant it right then.

But Lee knew that in two hours, or ten hours, or ten days...that same old demon would be back to tap Michael on the shoulder once again and ask for a dance.

And the devil doesn't take no for an answer.

Michael slept and Lee turned on the laptop. The password was easy to guess – Lee just thought of the cause of Michael's departure from reason. The latest document Michael was working on popped open, the next chapter started and Lee stopped reading after only a few lines.

Tobias could almost smell the death, the sense of waste and futility as he watched on - a stunned spectator at the wheel of his own car. The cracking sound of the head against the windscreen - like a massive chocolate Easter egg being thrown at a brick wall. The quick splatter of blood that seemed instantaneous - premeditated; The sickening thud of the heavy body on the aluminium panels.

The words had little connection to the story at play, like this was simply a purging of Michael's mind. It troubled Lee, concerned him that these words would come out of Michael on paper.

Lee could sense Michael's therapy here, understand his reasoning but knew that the more he read, the deeper was immersed into Michael's psyche. And the more he was alarmed.

He read further, taking in more of the story which appeared like an unconnected series of violent outbursts – descriptions of mutilations and disfigurements all caused by automobiles and those that drove them. The language had a sensuality, a sexual nature that was unnerving and disturbing.

The darkness that Michael described was more than a virtual fog – it had manifested itself into words.

Then Lee read on further and he started to understand the underlying point.

" _Flip-flip" - The tyres rode over the cat's eye markers between the lanes._

Carlton held onto the steering wheel as best he could...but he was distracted. Sadie had pushed her skirt up over her waist and was sliding between Carlton and the steering wheel - and onto his erect penis. As he slid into her, she bucked slightly, forcing him deeper and he struggled to get a good enough view of the road. The steering wheel jerked slightly in his hands as she rode him, the responsive power steering compensating for any slight unexpected movement.

His knees banged against the steering column as he adjusted himself for Sadie's gyrations, his right foot depressing the accelerator intermittently, jerking the car faster.

At 10.30PM the freeway was close to deserted, but the few cars Carlton and Sadie screamed past were able to get a glimpse of their fetish at over 100 kilometres an hour. Sadie's hair was in his face, Carlton blew air and spat it away from him as he tried to maintain some visual contact with the road ahead of him. At night, oncoming obstacles seemed to arrive quicker than they did during the day - even more so when you travel at 120 on the freeway with your girlfriend riding you all the way.

Sadie - his twisted little queen.

These games were becoming more and more exciting and she pushed the envelope further, always looking for the next thrill or the next kick. He had met her through the VRT support group at the hospital when she visited with her father. Sadie's Dad had been in an accident and suffered brain damage - she simply couldn't make any sense out of it. Her father had been a middle manager at a timber company, looking forward to retirement and golf five days a week. Now he sat in a day chair convalescing, waiting for the evening's mushy meal and staring into the middle distance with a catatonic glare.

It was senseless - no amount of therapy or talking about feelings could ever hope to turn that into something more understandable than sheer, dumb-ass bad luck.

So Sadie decided to live - and Carlton was the ticket.

They devoured danger – the edge of sanity was getting thinner and thinner. The line between thrill-seeking and permanent disability was narrowing – almost transparent now as they dared to dare.

The scenarios, the rush, how it would be set up, filmed, relived and revisited...that was all Sadie.

She rode him gently, careful not to bump the steering wheel too much. Two other cars travelled with them – a BMW and a Subaru WRX, both stolen. Each car had at least one or two couples in it, each performing a variety of sex-acts. Sex in public is a thrill that cannot be explained - it must be experienced. Its more than just the thrill of getting caught - it's the exhibitionist nature of being seen. They want to be seen, they want to get caught.

" _Hey baby, how you going?" Carlton whispered breathlessly as Sadie continued her sensual grind on his crotch. He felt his cock sliding in and out of her wetness, the warmth so satisfying, so natural. He never felt so content with life than he did when he was having sex._

" _I'm good," she said, her hot breath against his throat. She bit down hard against the muscles in his neck, not breaking the skin but hard enough to leave a mark. His fingers gripped the wheel tightly, his right foot still hard on the accelerator._

" _Are you close?" He could feel her approaching orgasm in her breath, in the increasing pressure of her thighs straddling his own._

" _Fuck yes!" She replied, barely able to get the words out as she thrust away at him, her arms pulling her as close to him as she could get. "Fucking ride me hard and smash this car!"_

Carlton pulled violently on the steering wheel, sending the Falcon across the lane and into the side of the stolen BMW. The side of Carlton's car slapped into the passenger side of the Beemer, glass smashing instantly as the side windows splintered upon impact. Shards of razors sliced through the air and nicked at his skin, and at Sadie's, providing tiny wounds that dug and split the skin with surgical precision.

Carlton felt no pain as the slivers of glass made their incisions – the soft oozing of venous blood washed over the tiny wounds. Maybe he was getting immune to this?

The tail-gating Subaru had nowhere to go but into the rear of the Falcon and hit on the rear passenger side and swinging the Falcon further into the BMW's path.

Metal ground and twisted as the tyres squealed - ripping across the tarmac with the momentum of the vehicles interlocked - becoming as one. They joined, an obscene conglomeration of glass and metal, swarming as a gestalt unit towards the barrier on the outside of the emergency lane.

The cars continued their ballistic ballet, pirouetting around one another as they spun towards the crash barrier.

A slap.

A crunch – and the Falcon hit the barrier, sliding along the metal obstruction with a screaming protestation to the night sky. The Falcon and the BMW were nose to nose now – the Ford careening backwards along the rail, the Beemer pushing it along.

Sadie's climax matched his own as Carlton felt the walls of her vagina contract and spasm into orgasm. He let his seed spout too – driving into her uterus with a rhythmic palsy. She thrust, screaming out cries of ecstasy as he let go of the wheel.

Delusions of control in a motor vehicle accident.

The cars slowed and stopped as Sadie rolled off his lap – their sexual juices mingling into a cocktail of desire. Their blood flowed slowly, light cuts from the glass now starting to sting as the blood and salty sweat leaked out of them.

Their cameras filmed, recorded. The depravity and excess of their desires were now entrenched in time, mementos of a fantasy that froze them in perpetuity. Tomorrow he would splice together the movie of their exploits – porn on wheels. Sex and mayhem at 120km/h.

His erection returned at the thought – Sadie noticed it.

Lee turned away from the computer and took a deep breath. He didn't know the characters or what the story was supposed to be about, but he knew where this was coming from.

He knew the passion, the fire and the torment that created such an explosion of violence and sexuality – two abstracts that were so far from the true nature of his friend.

Lee understood.

# Strange Bedfellows

Adrian Courtenay sat in front of his computer, the desk at the office strewn with paper – scraps of notes, bundled manuscripts that had been printed, loose pages of 12 point Times New Roman scattered at random.

He was one of those people who couldn't read from an electronic version. Adrian needed a hard copy, red pen at hand, and he would scribble notes, deftly encircling words or phrases that piqued his attention. Anyone looking at his work would have no idea if the ellipses made roughly by his red felt tipped pen were signifying his dislike for the turn of phrase, or his admiration for it.

Today the sun beat in through the front window of the house-turned-office in West Perth. The filtered rays shone distorted shadows of leaves and branches onto the wall and across his polished Jarrah floorboards. The sea breeze was in and the shadows danced around the floor, momentarily distracting Adrian as he tried to concentrate on the piece he was reading. In the not-too-distance, the sounds of peak hour traffic were building – the constant city-hum filling the void like a stoner-rock version of tinnitus.

It was a relief for him to feel the air rush in, propelled by the 25 knot sea breeze, as the door was opened and his afternoon intruded upon. He had no appointments this day and his immediate thought was...Michael Forster.

It would have been just like Michael to arrive completely unannounced. Lately it would have been just like Michael to arrive unannounced and drunk...or stoned. Adrian might have been Michael's agent, but he also actually liked the guy as well. It was true that Adrian didn't necessarily enjoy the company of all those he was an agent for, but Michael was different. They were a similar age, similar background...and Michael never once referred to Adrian's homosexuality. This aspect of Adrian's life had no impact on Michael at all – it was simply a non-issue. Adrian found this so refreshing, so liberating, that he instantly loved Michael for that.

And Adrian understood Michael's problems too. He knew the issues that the writer had been going through, although he barely understood his pain. Michael's issues were ones that Adrian hoped he never had to go through, but he knew that inevitably he would.

Everyone did at some stage.

But, on this Thursday afternoon, the doorway wasn't filled with Michael's disheveled stoop. It was Michael's friend Lee Holbrook.

Put simply, Lee was not Adrian's most favourite person in the world. Like Michael's parents before him, Adrian found lee to be a bad influence. He knew Michael had a dark streak, and a propensity to go off the deep end, but Lee always seemed to be the catalyst.

This was the first time Lee had ever visited him though. In fact, it was the first time they had been together without Michael.

"Lee," Adrian said looking up from the dross he was forcing himself to read, grateful for the interruption. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, Adrian knew he sounded like a twat. He wanted to be sophisticated, bohemian, all windswept and interesting – a world-weary soul who was a touch above everyone else. Especially someone like Lee who was about as sophisticated as a hammer to the face. However Adrian always came off like a pretentious wanker – at least that's what he thought he sounded like. Lee's reply confirmed it.

"Don't be a pretentious wanker Adrian. We have a problem."

With his usual casual aplomb, Lee swung the door shut with precision, a gentle tap signifying the closure. He wafted across the room with grace, his athletic body effortlessly sashaying to the spare leather seat opposite the glass-topped desk buried under a nest of paperwork.

"What do you mean-?" Adrian started.

"Shit mate," Lee interrupted, "I thought the 21st century was supposed to bring in a paperless office? You've got half the fucking Amazon on your desk."

"Oh, I always like to print things out...so I can make notes." Adrian indicated the mounds of sheets with red markings all over them. As usual, Adrian's attempt to appear superior eventuated in him sounding pompous and resulted in him defending himself.

Then, before Lee could speak, Adrian realized why...he was attracted to Lee.

The virtual smack in the face hit him hard as he noticed Lee's face moving as he talked, but the words didn't reach him. The realization that he actually _liked_ Lee was more of a shock than it should have been. Lee was just the sort of guy that Adrian was attracted too – fit and strong, a bit rough around the edges, but with a casual charm that was infectious.

And straight...Adrian was always attracted to the straight ones. Maybe it was the lure of the unattainable that hooked him in?

His therapist would say that his attraction towards men who could not (or would not) ever reciprocate was simply a manifestation of his fear of intimacy and commitment. Adrian conceded this to be the truth...and that was why that therapist was so damned expensive.

"Whatever," Lee brushed off. "We need to talk about your meal ticket."

"Now hang on Lee! You know Michael is more than just a client for me!" Adrian was genuinely upset by that remark – especially so given the last twelve months or so and what he has seen Michael go through.

"Keep your pants on mate, I'm just provoking you – you touchy queen." Lee smiled that infectious grin that wiped away any ill feeling Adrian had. "I know you've been there for him lately. Therefore you'll know that he's not in a good place right now."

"That's true," Adrian replied, thinking about Michael's appearance at the coffee shop the week before. He looked, smelt and reeked of desperation and was so far away from the talent Adrian knew was deep inside. "The last time I saw him, he was a disgrace."

Lee threw a thin pile of pages on his desk, rolled up with a thick elastic band in the centre keeping it all together on one tight tube.

"Well, it's getting worse. I don't know if you've read his latest stuff?"

"No, he wouldn't show me anything. But writers can be finicky like that".

"This is it. Have a read of that and tell me what you reckon."

Adrian picked up the roll and set it aside his computer to read later. "I'll get into that as soon as I have finished this," he said, indicating the dross he was grateful to be avoiding.

"No," Lee said, "read it now. There's fuck all there anyway so it won't take you long."

"What's wrong with it? Is it really bad?"

"No, the words and the prose are actually quite good – in fact some of this might be his best stuff ever. But it's the content, the theme."

"Not going anywhere? Aimless?" These were questions Adrian was asking, his upwards inflection at the end of each phrase signifying this – and inviting the answer 'Yes'.

Lee wasn't playing that game: "Just fucking read it and I'll make myself a cuppa tea while you do."

Fifteen minutes later Adrian knew exactly what Lee meant.

Tobias could see Carlton losing his grip. The group had become a rabble since the intrusion of Desiree – that catalyst to maelstrom that drew everyone towards her. Carlton was increasingly disheveled, a wreck of a human being and the shell of the former counselor.

Their crashes became more erratic, more erotic. The extreme nature of their nocturnal joyrides became more brazen.

Lust for the extreme + ability to achieve it = increasing resistance to satisfaction.

Like a drug addict who needs a greater kick in each shot, so too Carlton required that push closer to the edge. His motto: "If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much room."

Carlton was doomed, even Tobias could see it now. Sadie, Carlton's demonic muse, was a post-alive morgue dweller. As they drove off from the scene of the tragedy only three nights before, Tobias looked back despite Carlton's warnings – the fate of Lot's wife's not learned by Tobias.

He saw Sadie sprawled naked on the black-top, shrinking into the hazy distance as they sped away from the scene. Parts of her were sprawled out over the road as she fell from the bonnet of the speeding cars, masturbating as they careened down the freeway.

How was anyone to know the pot-hole would be there?

Carlton barely lost control, but it was enough to send poor doomed Sadie to her death, scraping and smearing across the tarmac before coming to a sudden bone-crunching and hideous thump into the concrete guard wall.

Carlton was emotionless, cold, detached. Shock will manifest itself in many ways.

For Tobias, the thrill of the joy-ride was over – this rollercoaster had outlived its purpose for him. He didn't want to go on the ride three days later but, at the insistence of his mentor, he relented. "Just one last time," he agreed.

" _You won't regret it," Carlton replied. Or did he say: "forget" instead of "regret"?_

Famous last words.

Carlton's whole life was control – the support group, his VRT's. Also the joyriders. But both of these spiraled into mayhem and when Carlton put the 9mm pistol in his mouth as he jerked off at the steering wheel, controlling the car with his knees at 140 kilometers an hour, Tobias knew that this was the climax – le point culminant in his life.

Death wish + means+ reason = No return.

Tobias braced himself as Carlton ejaculated, semen spurting onto the steering wheel. Carlton's legs stiffened with the pleasure of orgasm, the car wobbled. Tobias heard the metal gun clink against Carlton's teeth amid screams/pleas from the rear seat – others also now aware of Carlton's plan.

The car BOOMED, blood and hair spray painted the interior of the car as it swerved violently into the sand on the edge of the freeway, burying itself axle deep immediately.

The remnants of Carlton's head flopped around on his now limp neck, slapping into the steering wheel as the gun clattered with a heavy thud onto the floor of the car.

This time Tobias acted – he ran.

He knew he was covered in blood and brain, but, in the darkness, he figured he could get home.

Carlton was no more – he had finally achieved his goal. The group would be no more, what was left for Tobias now?

As he ran, his repairing limbs aching with every step, his amateur lungs striving for air with each step, he realised that the rest of his life was now forced upon him. Control was gone, finished.

That scared him more than dying.

A further fifteen minutes later and Adrian and Lee both knew what they had to do.

# Finding Fault

"A fucking intervention?"

I couldn't believe it. Were they serious?

I saw their nervousness at this approach and realized they were just as uncomfortable as I was.

"You guys know this shit doesn't work right? It never has done, urban myth right there!"

"Call it what you want," said Adrian, "but you need help. We can't just sit and watch you destroy everything."

There weren't that many people in the room, only 3.

1. Adrian – my agent and, well I guess I had to admit it now, my friend.

2. Lee – my best friend and recent savior.

3. Ryan – my brother and the only one from my family still left.

That was it. When it all came down to it, these were the only ones present at my so-called intervention. I'm not sure what depressed me more – the knowledge that they felt it necessary to intervene, or the fact that there were only three people there.

There would have been four if Tina was there.

"You can't say this isn't a shock Mick," said Lee as he stood in the doorway, making sure that I didn't make a run for it. I wasn't going anywhere – my feet were like lead sandals, my legs immovable. I felt like I was being crushed, implosion imminent. The breath was being slowly squeezed out of my lungs; I'd forgotten how to breathe.

This was my life. This was what it had been reduced to – two and a half friends (Okay, three if I am honest about Adrian) trying to make me realise what I already knew deep down. I was in a black cocoon, not knowing up from down, left from right. Day and night blurred into one, the lines between what was real and what was not could not be determined anymore. How could I trust my eyes?

As I stood there facing these guys, they waited for me to talk. Or were they waiting for me to cry? Explode? Fall apart? I did none of these things. I looked at them and knew that this was fate – my path was always going to lead me here. It was only a matter of time.

In my hand, two typed pages explained more about 'why' than I could ever have said out loud – my musings earlier in the day that I was going to use for one of Colby's chapters in the book – my poor crippled mute.

They're all looking at me!

I have no idea what's going on because I only just came into this, but everyone here is looking at me like something is all my fault.

It's mayhem.

Anarchy.

I can see screaming, tears, hysteria.

Words are yelled in my direction, but I can't make them all out – sounds blurred and my comprehension distorts.

" _Fault!" I could make that out_

" _Dead because of you!" I understood._

But, through the maelstrom, I can detect support, sympathy. Not words, but feelings – a soul that is with me, protecting me. It's a male presence; it's helping me as I sit in this van.

The driving is erratic – clearly affected by the emotion present. The bodies bounce around the tin shell, some of the clothed, some of them trying to be clothed. I can feel the hard steel under my butt, taste the fear in the air. A woman is crying uncontrollably and a semi naked man puts his arm around her in consolation – a small gesture that envelops and comforts her.

I sense the sadness.

Clarity is returning – it's like I opened the door and stepped into a riot. The bombardment of images/violence/stimulation is too much to immediately understand but it is becoming clearer. Lucidity is approaching as the people in the van regain some semblance of human form.

Words and sentences start to unravel and I realise that someone is dead. Outside the window of the car I see the night flashing past, lighting riding the darkness like surfers on a wave – flashing past with grace and poise. Then I see Carlton again, his destroyed cranium a mass of blood, bone and brain.

" _It's no-one's fault," I hear someone say._

" _It was a matter of time." This is Tobias as he exits the vehicle and lumbers off into the darkness._

" _We all need to calm down – it's under control," I think someone says. Or maybe it was me? Did anyone else hear that? Then the tone changes._

I am calm; I can sense my own detachment to the people in this car. I feel no empathy, no sense of belonging or loss at the death of someone these people felt strongly about.

I can feel another presence – malevolent, manipulative. It's visceral in the car, but I cannot place it.

I look out the window and, in the darkness, the window reflects.

I know this is my reflection, my face in the throes of rapture and bliss. The chaos, the mayhem, the pleasure of the forbidden – it's all reflected in the mirrored effect of the glass in the dark.

I recognise the face as I wake.

Desiree.

Finally Ryan said something: "Look, I'm not sure how this is supposed to go, but I think you need to know just what you're putting us through. We've been through so much as it is, you're just being such a selfish prick. It's about time you sorted yourself out!"

Only a brother can say that to another brother – even close friends can't be that candid. He continued:

"Don't get me wrong – I fucking love you. I know things haven't been easy lately, but you have to stop destroying yourself and get this under control – you're killing yourself and you're killing us. Me – you're killing part of me too."

I saw the water in his eyes well, I knew that constricting throat feeling as the words struggled out through emotion – the pain of feeling/caring prevented the vocal chords of expressing what needed to be said.

"Not helping Ryan," Adrian tried to be peace-keeper, playing 'Good Cop' to Ryan's 'Bad Cop'. "We are here to help Michael, not condemn him."

"Fuck that," Ryan snapped back, "I thought this was an intervention where we get to tell him just how much his bullshit behaviour is pissing us off." His tears started and my heart broke for him – the humility and pain/anger in his outburst tore me open.

I was getting used to that feeling.

Words were exchanged and I watched on with interest. I could see that they were all there for me, but had no idea how to do actually make this work.

Then Ryan said: "What's that?" and pointed at the papers in my hand.

I opened the sheets up and I read. When I got to: _"Dead because of you!",_ I could read no more.

My heart opened up, pain flowed like melting snow. A crushing ache collapsed within me as I finally imploded into agony. A howl of agony wailed through the room as I finally realized my fate. There was a vague feeling of weightlessness as I fell in slow motion, gliding to the floor like a feather. I barely registered the landing, softly, agonizingly laying prostate on the hard wood floor.

My jaw drooped open, spittle spraying out with each sharpened breath. I shook, a violent post-addiction comedown. There were words being spluttered out by me, gargled within the slime I oozed from my orifice, my eyes, my pores. My collapse was complete and total – I was broken.

They broke me.

And, like the pages of subconscious revelation said: _"Fault!"_

The fault here lay entirely with me:

my fault they were intervening;

my fault that my behaviour drove them to do this;

my fault that caused this behaviour.

Yes...it was my fault that my wife was dead.

# O Tannenbaum

Tina...her memory so warm within me that I could still feel her skin, still smell her scent in everything. I picked up a bath towel and the smell of her as she dried from a shower filled my nostrils.

Scent – the most powerful trigger for memory.

My friends surrounded me – at least I think they did. I couldn't tell any more. My brain was a mish mash of pain and confusion. Someone said something, somewhere and I drifted away again....

It may have been a slap, it may have been real. It could have been my mind returning to reality. I saw Adrian's mouth moving, but only bubbles came out. The air that escaped was haloed by a smoky cocoon, holding in the sound and dulling the world. Ryan spoke as well, his words also captured. The bubbles floated upwards and watched on in silence as they wafted towards the ceiling light.

Then the heat from light exploded the smoke rings and the sounds fell about me, garbled and on top of one another. I made out nothing. The sound made me recoil, the assault aural and physical. And I could smell the smoke – it smelled like Tina.

My eyes closed again, multiple voices talking over one another as the sounds fell on me – an over-riding wail the constant backdrop.

Time passed I think...

My chest ripped in two...

My legs ached as if I had run three marathons, my skull hammered away more fiercely than any hangover dared to attempt. Fuck you hangover, grief has made you its bitch!

My throat was full, breathing almost impossible. My eyes refused to open. Was it guilt, or shame?

My mind drowned out the sounds of placating assistance that meant well and focused on something mundane – Christmas. It was three weeks away and I understood my awakening. Christmas was Tina's favourite time of the year – she was just like a child as soon as carols came on in the shopping centre and tinsel went on sale in the supermarket.

My mind flashed to a Christmas Tree she bought one year – it was only about three feet tall and it was the first one we had together after she moved in with me...before we even married. She had bought it from an old people's home that had recently closed down and was liquidating everything.

That little Christmas Tree...I loved it so much. The look of complete happiness on her face when she set it up was priceless – that was my Christmas gift right there!

The tree smelled like:

Old people.

Blue rinse.

Smoking cigarettes down to the filter.

It smelled of desperation, hopelessness and loneliness.

It smelled of abandonment, of neglect, of no visits from family.

It reeked of soft-boiled food, pureed mince beef and lukewarm tea.

It smelled of bedsores and Parkinson's, of Alzheimer's and strokes.

It smelled of adult diapers, out of date clothing, commodes, bed-pans and reading lamps.

It stunk of stale cigarettes, out-of-tune pianos and off-key singing.

It had the aroma of a scrabble set missing a "W".

The smell of cynicism, weariness and jealousy emanated from it in a funk that was almost visible.

I sensed every one of these things as I looked at this little tree – but Tina saw it's new life. She saw that it was our first tree together and she saw that it had been reborn into our relationship. Her complete happiness with it cemented my love for her right then.

I had a vague recollection of movement. I was standing, my eyes opened but the world blurred around me. It could have been tears, or fug, or a combination of both. But my single-minded focus was for that tree. I knew we still had it. If I found it, then I still had a part of her.

"Michael, what's up?" That might have been Lee.

"Where are you going?" Definitely Adrian.

Sounds were emitted from me but even I wasn't sure what I was saying, so I have no idea how Ryan understood it as: "The Christmas Tree? OK, let's find it."

I knew where it was though – where I always kept it. In the garage, in an old packing box. The dust would be caked on the outside, the age-old packing tape on the box had long since lost all it's sticky and flapped away impotently at the open ends of the cardboard.

The dust fluffed around me as I opened the box and I pulled out the dark green artificial tree and it molted some of its plastic spiky artificial needles. It had been losing a few each Christmas for years and would, eventually, be bald. Just some taped wire rods where a dark green forest of leaves once hung.

The Christmas Tree's smells filled me once again, transporting me back to that Christmas 13 years ago. It was then, holding that tree in the garage and surrounded by my friends that I realized that I had actually lost Tina forever.

# The Older Brother

The bowling ball made the familiar rumble-tumble roll down the alley, the rail-guards preventing it from settling into the gutter for it's short journey. The ball pin-balled off the rails and continued it's voyage, bumbling echoes of the slow moving sphere filled the half full room of lanes.

What the HELL am I doing here? A spare wheel in the scene of happy families?

My brother Ryan and his wife Sophie were only trying to do their best – I knew that. After the so-called intervention – which was less cathartic and more embarrassing in retrospect – I had committed to them that I'd get better (what else could I say after that?). The novel – such that it was – hadn't been touched in the last month. Sobriety had brought lethargy and procrastination with clarity.

At nights, sitting in front of the computer watching porn instead of writing my seminal follow-up, I secretly longed for the oblivion that addiction took me to. It was like writing in my sleep – an altered state of consciousness that allowed work to get done without ever knowing it. That longing for "just one drink", or "only a little pill – I know when to stop" was a nagging, badgering tappy-tap on my consciousness that never seemed to abate. Perhaps time would dull its impact, deaden its persistence.

God I hoped so.

Ryan had read my story so far and he knew what it all meant. He was part me, a younger me, the better me.

He was the me that finished what he started, completed his degree and stayed in his vocation.

He was the me that could find a wife who wanted children, who wanted the domestic, nuclear family that I eschewed purely for cosmetic reasons.

He was the me that didn't build facades of pretension.

He was the me that I could never be.

Growing up, we shared so much. There was only the two of us and we were two years apart, so we pretty much grew up together – best mates and confidantes. In some ways I helped make things easier for him.

When I brought a girl home, I was 18 years old. Her name escapes me now I think about it – you think I'd remember my "first one". Simone? Sandy? Stacey? I was a late starter and I had only ever gone as far as kissing, fumbling, a few gropes of some boobs and a hand-job. But, at 18, I knew that this was now the adult version of the teen awkwardness; the MA15+ version of the PG prologue. This was about to be one-night-stand sex – the sex of the movies, of friends' smutty stories (fantasies), the sex of the letters to Playboy.

But I still lived at home. However, despite knowing that this was a seriously bad error of judgment, the little head that resided in my pants won any discussion of logic and morality that went on and she ended up at my place. We weren't caught or heard that night, but the next morning, my mother was not amused at all. Outwardly she was very nice to the girl (what the HELL was her name again? Shauna? Siobahn? Shannon?), but the daggers my mother threw me with her eyes told me that I was going to pay for this once the awkwardness of the morning after was done with.

My father said nothing, fuck all. I think he was just happy I wasn't gay.

Once the young lady left (Shantelle? Sherrie? Sharon?), I was denounced a pariah – a shameful blight upon the family. I was a fornicating harbinger of immorality and decadence that brought deviancy into the home. My Dad simply agreed with her – mainly to show unity and also because he couldn't be bothered with any arguments.

I knew that my time at home was over – there was no way I could live the life I wanted so I moved out of home not long after. I wanted that freedom and abandon that only the young can truly indulge in. I never saw the girl again (Shelley? Shirley? Sarah? Yes! It was Sarah!). A year later, Ryan brought home a girl from a party and, in the morning, my Mum and Dad cooked her breakfast and Dad even drove her home.

The older brother always paves the way, forges through the unknown wilderness of adolescence to lead not only his siblings, but also his parents, down the path to adulthood for the children. That was my lot in life as an older brother.

It wasn't all one-way traffic though; being the older brother did have some advantages.

I was 15 and Ryan was 13 and we were watching TV. Mum and Dad had friends around for a dinner party so we made ourselves scarce by disappearing into the lounge all night. Both of us were at that in-between stage where we were too old to be little kids and watched all the time by our protective parents, but we weren't old enough yet to fully engage in adult conversation. Parties, Christmases, any sort of family get-togethers ended up in three groups – kids 11 and under, parents, and the teens.

(I never liked the term "teen" – I always preferred "Tween" because the 13-16 years old is in between an adult and a child. Not quite one and over-evolved from the other.)

My parents were in the driveway with their friends, executing a particularly long goodbye, which could last 30 minutes sometimes. I had been ordered to have a shower before bed so I left my brother lying on the floor, his head resting on his arms as he watched Arnold Schwarzenegger fumble through the jungle chasing an almost invisible alien killing machine. I turned on the hot water and disrobed only to feel the gaseous rumblings of a mega-fart build quickly in my bowels.

I don't know why this thought hit me, and maybe its just a male-thing, but I immediately realised that this was too good a build-up of gas to simply waste it on myself – I needed to share. I wrapped the towel around my waist and snuck back into the lounge to creep up upon my unsuspecting younger sibling. Poor Ryan was so ensconced in Arnie's antics that he never heard a thing.

I quickly jumped astride of him, unwrapped the towel and squatted – all in one motion. As I did I pushed out the bottom-burp with all my might as I knew I would only have a second or two before Ryan reacted.

I pushed too hard.

I sharted.

In one ferocious burst of rectal power, I managed to cover my poor brother in a mass of diarrhoea. It exploded from within me with a force and pressure that I would not have thought possible, perhaps amplified by my squatting stance and by gravity.

I immediately jumped up and away as he rose, shocked beyond comprehension. I could see that his instant reaction was one of disbelief, followed by revulsion and anger – all in the space of approximately two seconds.

Ryan was smaller than me and I knew that I had seriously crossed the line with this one, so before he could say anything, scream for our parents who would surely beat me to within an inch of brain damage, I dropped the towel entirely and physically dragged my shit-covered brother into the bathroom. I expected protestation from him but I think he wanted the shit off him just as much as I did, albeit for different reasons.

So there we were, one naked 15 year old with faecal matter running down his legs dragging his younger sibling (similarly covered in the same matter, but this time extending from his cranium to his waist) racing to get to the bathroom. As we entered the room, I threw open the curtain and shoved my brother under the water.

That was when the screaming began.

I had forgotten to turn on any cold water.

Within the space of 30 seconds, my innocent sibling went from lying on the floor watching an action movie in his pyjamas to getting covered in his brother's excrement and then being scalded with second degree burns.

He tried to get out but I pushed him back and turned on the cold water, instantly cooling him.

That was when the door opened behind us and my father stood there – in a fit of hysterical laughter. True he was slightly drunk from the dinner party, but I could imagine his surprise to come back inside to find both sons gone, the smell of shit in the air, smattering of faecal evidence on the carpet and screaming from the bathroom. His journey down the corridor would reveal more shit, a soiled towel and more screaming. Then he opened the door.

Yes, being an older brother was a burden at times. But I could laugh about it later.

Ryan didn't though – he still couldn't see the funny side all these years later. Even his wife Sophie knew this story and thought it was brilliant, which kind of made it worse for Ryan.

Yet, here I was – a spare cog in the machine of their family at a bowling alley. My brother loved me, I knew that. Was it despite the antics of the past, or because of them? I always thought it was a combination of the two actually.

Sophie was always kind to me, in a patronising kind of way. She reminded me a lot of my mother and it was no surprise Ryan would end up with a girl that was more like Mum – my wife was the opposite of Mum.

Also no surprise.

Thoughts ran, yet again, to Tina and her absence in my life. If I'd married a Mum-replacement like Ryan did, would I be in this place right now? Perhaps destiny would ensure that I would be...I'll never know. To contemplate is folly, but I can't help it.

When all you have is "ifs and maybes", then nothing is twee.

The reality of where my life had ended up hit me like a freight train that Sunday morning in the Golden Lanes Bowling Alley. Ryan's kids, my two little nieces (twins – Polly and Eva) struggled to hold the bowling ball as they gently pushed the heavy sphere down the almost imperceptible gradient of the polished floorboards. These little four years olds were so perfect, so innocent, that some part of me yearned for one of my own in the hope that some of that naiveté would rub off on me – even though I knew such perfection was not viral.

Ryan had taken me here to get me "out of my dump", to try and keep me "off the gear" and help me get "back on track". The fact was that the track he wanted me on was one I never wanted anyway.

But I loved the fact that he was trying – and so was Sophie who, for the first time I had had ever noticed, was actually being sincere and genuine with me. A part of me wondered if she had been that way all along but I was too blinkered to see it.

My depression did not abate with this trip though, it exacerbated it. It made me realise more and more what it was I was missing and how I'd never achieve this level of family bliss that Ryan – and all these other families at the alley this morning – so clearly had. I could see birthday parties in other lanes, noisy sugar-hyped kids (the first step to substance addiction) competing to see who could be the most annoying and irritating. Huffled mothers tried to retain a semblance of control – diffident fathers watched on with curiosity as they necked another Corona.

Domesticity – how I envy thee.

Through the cloud of my self-imposed negativity I was able to spot something that changed me. This made me realised just what a self-important, arrogant, whining, depressing twat I had become. This kicked me so hard in the heart that I felt like a bolt of lightening spearing through me.

Three lanes over was another birthday party, a smaller one with only four kids. The rails were up on the gutters and the children – probably seven or eight years old were waiting for the birthday boy to have his roll. The ball slipped from his stubby fingers, smacking to the floorboards with a thunderous thump, barely missing his bowling-shoe clad toes by an inch or two. The purple ball rolled with the speed of tectonic plates as it rumbled in slow motion down the slight gradient towards the awaiting pins. The red and white targets had their destiny prolonged as the ball approached, bouncing off the rails. I swear I could see the pins physically shake with fear as they awaited their fate.

The ball hit them, gently nudging the first one and a domino effect ensued, miraculously knocking over all ten pins – not so much with an explosive smash, but more of a crumpled heap. But a strike is a strike.

Birthday Boy's friends jumped up and hollered, fist pumping the air. But birthday boy wasn't sure what all the fuss was about. He turned around to face his friends and the beaming faces of his proud parents and then I realised the source of his confusion. He had Down's Syndrome.

One of his friends told him what he'd down and his face lit up with a beaming radiance that could never be faked. The genuineness, the pleasure, the sheer excitement of the moment filled me with such warmth and love at that moment that I forgot all of my own troubles. I didn't know this kid, nor his parents or friends, but in that moment there was nothing but love in that lane.

True – his parents would always have to be there for him.

True – it was likely he would die before his Mum and Dad.

True – he would never have the opportunity to bring a girl back home.

But this was purity of spirit personified in front of me.

How could I feel so low when this family – who have every right to ask "why me", "why us" – can revel in the joy of the moment and live their lives to the full?

What's wrong with me if they can do this and I couldn't?

Yes my wife was dead...

And there I stopped.

Those words: "My wife was dead". They appeared to me naturally, casually, without emotional breakdown, tears, indulgence and self-destruction. They rose within me as matter-of-fact, as life.

Without knowing it, the Birthday Boy changed my life.

Thank-you Ryan.

# An Easy Death to Handle

The months had slipped away from me, distorting and elongating whilst I took my slow motion dive into oblivion. The time that passed had the nerve to become a year – then a year and a half. I hadn't realised I'd entered a self-imposed time warp, so enrapt in my own self-destruction and denial that I had barely recognised the passage of time.

My memory faded, blocked out and erased through selective amnesia and the genuine article induced through alcohol and cowardice. Although lucidity returned like the prodigal son, it did not bring with it the guilt-ridden baggage that was memory. I couldn't remember the details of the months past – and I thanked my mind for that small mercy.

But sobriety brought with it the pain that I had been hiding from (read: running from). The honesty I faced each day, as I eschewed alcohol, forced me to remember the past; to recall my life before my attempt at slow motion suicide was thwarted by the best friends that I could have ever hoped. The subsequent weeks of post-intervention, post-breakdown, post-revelation revealed a strength that I never knew I had.

I resisted the urge to consume.

I welcomed the terror of reverie.

I confronted the demon of guilt.

And I remembered Tina.

Not in the sexualised way of a drunken reminiscence as I was jerking off to internet porn late at night, trying to convince myself that I wasn't cheating on her with these porn stars if I was thinking of her.

Not in the romanticised way of our white wedding, tuxedos and awkward speeches.

I remembered her as she was.

And those memories are mine.

I could go into descriptive minutia, outlining every nuance of her face, her body, her personality. I could describe the curve of her hips in a dozen different ways, the sparkle in her eyes would take another thousand words. Her sense of humour would be two chapters, alternating between the absurd (and her love of Monty Pythonesque humour) and the high-brown intellectual stuff (a la Stephen Fry) that I rarely understood so I just laughed when she did to try and seem more intelligent than I was.

But none of this would help in any way. There were thousands of memories that had been released from the prison I had locked them in using alcohol as the most vehement jailor. Now they were free, they all wanted attention and screen time in the feature that played back in my head.

However, what was most difficult to recall was the memory I had of something that I never saw. It was one that I knew intimately but it was still hiding from me, dodging my newfound courage to confront the past and move on with life.

It was the memory of her death.

The words came to me as I searched – at first not even knowing what I was looking for. The frustration of failing to find something I didn't know I was looking for built up until I realised what it was – and then it hit me like a bus.

The night Tina died, I was not with her. I had been as a talk at the University of Western Australia which was arranged by the publisher and showcased Western Australian writing talent. I felt like a fraud at the time as I had only released two books, although they had done well. I recalled sitting on the stage waiting for my chance to give a five minute speech on my writing process and thinking to myself that I'd never felt more out of my depth than then. However, once I started speaking, the minutes flew by and, before I knew it, my five minutes turned into fifteen and I had to wind it up quickly. The other writers spoke, the audience politely applauded and that should have been that.

Except, "that" wasn't "that".

"That" became "something else" when the girl approached me to sign her book.

As I recalled this, I had the mental equivalent of stubbing my toe on a chair in the night. The pain, and the familiarity of it, was instantly recognisable.

Before me, holding open her book, was Desiree.

This was the Desiree of my story, her Gothic/Steampunk persona perfected as she told me how much she loved my two books and was "really hanging out" for the next one. I remembered smiling, coy and bashful, knowing that this brought out my dimples and turned most women to mush. And, in this façade of tough rock-chick, I noticed the cracks of femininity force through.

I should have left then – but I too was hooked. I couldn't take my eyes off this girl. Her beauty, her adoration and her attentions stroked my ego and I was a slave to temptation. I stayed and drank with her, lapping up her idolatry whilst trying to stay as cool as I dared. I wanted her and when she suggested we go back to her place, I was in no state to say no. The trap had been sprung, my lust caught fast and I couldn't escape.

We were barely inside the door of her apartment when our hands were all over reach other, lips locked and tongues probing. Clothing started to be pulled out and taken off when my mobile phone rang.

And the world exploded with the words "Sergeant Mike Phillips calling" echoed through my head. Desiree continued to get undressed but I had frozen as the policeman told me to get home straight away.

The strange thing about autopilot is the brain's inability to recall what actually is happening. I certainly drove home in a daze, but I have no idea if I ran red lights or stayed under the speed limit. One second I was detaching myself from a half naked seductive temptress, the next I was standing in my living room listening to a stranger explain how my wife was killed.

I have never known exactly why Tina was driving that night – she had said she was staying home instead of coming to the Uni with me. Maybe she was trying to find me; maybe she had other reasons to be out on the road in the rain – it was a mystery. My guilt sadistically hinted at the reason why she was dead, a hint that my consciousness decided was fact.

Tina had hit someone crossing the road in the dark, the slippery tarmac and poor lighting compounding her problems. She skidded off the road, rolled the car and was killed when it landed upside down in a flooded ditch.

I didn't need to know any more – the policeman's words were white noise to me as I deciphered the night. If I had come home straight away, she wouldn't have gone out and she'd be alive.

Fault – it was my fault.

I wrestled with this for a long time, various elements within me (and outside of me) argued that:

It was the walker's fault – the guy who staggered out onto the road.

It was Desiree's fault – she knew I was married, tempted and weak.

It was Tina's fault – she shouldn't have gone out, she should have been able to see the guy walking, she should have been able to control a bloody car!

But, for all my assuaging of guilt and denying the obvious, the simple fact remained that Tina had died because I was with another woman.

How does one reconcile that?

I have the death of a beautiful, intelligent, loving, caring, patient and sensual woman on my hands.

Evil, negative parts of my mind tried to tell me that she was out driving because she was seeing someone else. Even in my most unreasonable state of denial I knew that this was simply bullshit. This blackened part of me tried to deflect the responsibility by creating doubt. This was the same part of me decided that hiding inside Vodka bottle for the best part of two years was an appropriate way of handling this.

That was the part of me that took so long to die. For almost two years I wrestled with the demon that resided within, a cancerous sadist who taunted me with cowardice and fear.

The fear of facing up to my faults.

The fear of facing the death of the woman I loved.

The cowardice in failing to deal with it.

It's only once I decided to bury the alcohol that I was able to bury the past. I had to starve the inner demon of its sustenance to finally kill it and emerge from my own cocoon of denial to deal with reality. Fuelled by alcohol, regret and fear, the demon flourished and thrived. Denied this sustenance, it withered and died.

I found this death much easier to deal with.

# Phoenix

"So, how are you feeling?"

It was Adrian, his ubiquitous waistcoat seemed even more pretentious as the mercury neared in on 35 degrees Celsius – drops of salty perspiration hesitated on his temple before the merest of twitches sent them toppling down his reddened cheeks. Bubbles of water pooled on his dome, the occasional swipe of the napkin only succeeded in clearing a path for new beads to form.

My impotent iced tea warmed in the tempered sun, thick shade-cloth provided respite for the direct rays that seared from the heavens. The bottom of the tall glass sat in an expanding pond of dripping condensation, ice melted and refilled the glass as I drained it to quench my parched throat. The sweetness of the ice tea reminded me of taste sensations I'd forgotten to miss.

Adrian sipped his Macchiato, or Latte, or whatever the hell it was he was drinking. My new birth may have delivered me a new life, but Adrian was still living the same one.

"I'm good mate," I replied. "Much better now."

For some reason I couldn't bring myself to say thanks.

"You look like you've put on some weight," he said as he opened another packet of sugar and poured it into the cup.

I thought: 'pot and kettle'.

I thought: 'people in glass houses'.

"Thanks for that – you're not exactly the epitome of fitness yourself there Adrian. That's the third sugar in that cup."

"I meant it as a compliment."

"I know." And I did. My weight loss had been eon-like in it's progression, slowly eroding away my physique. I had been too oblivious to notice it but, once I stopped indulging, the wastage was apparent even to me.

"So, how are you feeling?" He asked again, he ruddy face bulging in the heat as he slurped at the roasting hot beverage now amped with sugar AND caffeine. He was a heart attack waiting for a host.

"You just asked me that," I replied.

"Yes, but this time I really mean it."

I'd forgotten his honesty. Some people took it as a brusqueness that bordered on smug rudeness, but he was simply blunt. His appearance made him look soft, bloated and pudgy – but I knew he was made of harder stuff than that. He'd stuck by me when others wouldn't have and that was something I'd always remember too.

"Oh, okay. Look I'm fine okay. It's still a daily struggle to keep focused but I am dealing with it and I know what I need to do."

"Have you finally cleaned out Tina's stuff?"

I took a deep breath as I recalled her knick-knacks, small keepsakes from her mother and her travels. They dotted the house, made it look messy and cluttered, yet the sum of this eclectic collection equaled a character that I had taken for granted. But, now that she was never coming back, I knew that I had to part with it all. They were like ghosts of her, haunting every square centimetre of the house.

For me to move on, I had to move them out.

"Not all of it – I can't bring myself to touch her clothes. I might have to get someone in to do that for me." Tina's clothes still filled the walked in robe – my rags were strewn across the room. I hadn't been in that robe since I identified her body at the hospital.

"Well, if you need me to do it, I'll be happy to help. Just call when you're ready."

"I will."

Adrian paused and I could see him wrestling with something in his mind. There was something he wanted to ask me but even his blunt confrontational manner was questioning whether or not to ask. My turn to force him now.

"Just ask mate, whatever it is."

"OK - how's the writing going?"

The writing...it should have been the last thing on my mind and Adrian knew it. I knew he didn't want to appear to be pushy, but he was a business man and he knew I had to produce something soon. The publisher wouldn't wait forever. I felt for him at that moment because he knew what I had been though (and, indeed, was still going through), but he also knew that if I didn't sort it out quickly, then the deal would be off.

The reality was that the book was a mess. I say "book" but that's really an insult to books. I had read and re-read it – I felt like I was reading some of it for the first time. Some pieces were Gonzo-esque in their absurdity. The language was flowery and hypnotic, the imagery was horrific in my newly found clarity.

Where I thought I had formed a story line, I found a cesspool of vitriol and pain. I tried to clean some of it up, maybe use some into another story. But I felt I was simply polishing a turd.

"It's a piece of shit mate. Disjointed ramblings and some form of psychotic therapy. It's like a psychedelic trip into my addled mind over the last year and a half. The characters are just crippled versions of me, each one of them the personification of my own frailty."

I confronted my own banality in those few sentences, by describing to Adrian just how excremental the story without a name had become. The storyline, or what I had tried to pass off as one, had been done before. And done better.

"So nothing worth salvaging? Nothing to at least offer the company to show them?"

"Not really. Some of the chapters would, by themselves, make okay short stories though."

I was clutching at straws but I saw a flicker of hope in him. "Short stories?"

"Maybe an anthology would be a good idea?" I asked.

I could almost see the gears of his mind turning as he weighed this up. An author with two successful books, suffers great personal tragedy and then hides in a bottle for a couple of years, only to rise like the Phoenix with a killer anthology of short stories. In these days of byte-sized chunks short stories, flash fiction and novellas have become the Zeitgeist.

"Anthology? Hmmm...not a bad idea that."

"I have quite a few short stories in the back catalogue – some of which won a couple of competitions a few years back. I'm sure we could use them and some new stuff and put together enough quality to submit."

Adrian leaned back revealing the spreading darkened pools of moisture under his armpits. The metal chair creaked and squeaked as he shifted his weight and he took in a huge lungful of air. He wiped his face with the paper napkin again, small white tufts of fibrous tissue clung on valiantly to three day old stubble, the scraping sand-paper like noise lost in his loud exhalation. That was his thought process.

"Yes, I like it...I like it a lot. That just might work. I'll get on it first thing tomorrow."

He waved to the waiter and ordered another unnecessary coffee, effectively adding another nail to his approaching coffin.

"Do you really need that?" I asked, knowing that I could be shot down for asking but, after the help Adrian gave me, I had to try.

"Oh don't start sweetie," he teased, "caring's my job not yours. You leave that up to me."

"Well, I was just trying to help."

Adrian reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper – I thought it was a cheque. I wondered what he was giving me money for. But it wasn't a cheque at all.

He explained what it was and I was confronted with the hardest decision of my life.

# Therapy In Absentia

The webpage clicked open and I sat there with the login prompt flickering, blinking on/off/on/off as it teased me with temptation. This was my webpage email – the one I hadn't checked in over a year and a half. Only Adrian and I had the password to this but I had forgotten it – along with the best part of 18 months – in the post-apocalyptic maelstrom of grief I'd been immersed in.

But now it tempted me. I hesitated even though I knew that I would check it – especially after Adrian had told me that he had cleaned it of spam and other unwanted or outdated detritus. If he hadn't, I would have been faced with thousands of emails and advertising scams, the bombardment of which would have been too overwhelming to contemplate – I would have simply deleted the lot and started again.

But Adrian had sorted that out for me.

He thought I was ready.

I thought I was ready.

I opened up the paper that Adrian gave me earlier and I entered the password (Tina and our wedding date) and the single email came up.

It had about 30 "FW:"s in front of it – the sender simply re-sending and adding each time.

I saw the single name in the inbox: Desiree.

I quickly scrolled to the bottom and started to read, following the woman's train of consciousness as she wrote. Her style staccato, clipped. Not a single word was wasted. I could imagine the keys on the computer being tappy-tapped very hard, plastic clicks paused as she formed the correct wording in her head. I knew this style just through the phrasing, the vocabulary and the language.

It was my style too.

Strangely, even after this time, I could hear her voice. I could smell her scent as her seductive tones filled my mind whilst I read her notes. She knew what had happened and her remorse was genuine and sincere. She blamed herself, then she blamed me. She never once blamed Tina, or questioned her.

Desiree explained her own challenges in life, her troubles with family, then the law. She explained how she worked to get into University and how she had finally passed her Science degree. She detailed failed romances and her own self-doubts and questions that she would have unlikely confided in anyone else. She opened up in email after email, describing her life and her needs.

I realised then that I was her therapy in absentia.

I also realised that I was falling for her.

I read on and she wrote about seeing me with a woman waiting for a taxi late at night. I was totally out of it and she said she tried to say hello but I didn't recognise her. This was three months ago – the night before another inevitable morning after. When I checked the date, I checked my half written manuscript and, sure enough, the email was sent the same day I had woken in the morning to read my subconscious scribblings from the night before. I remembered smelling her in the air, on my skin. I vaguely remembered another woman, but she had long gone leaving behind the ghost of sensuality and the taste of sex in the air.

The Desiree of my mind, the eclectic one that had emerged subliminally within the therapeutic purging of my grief-crippled subconscious, was not the same one that filled my inbox with intuition, vulnerability and compassion. The fictional Desiree was a hard-core version of the deeper individual; a façade that fulfilled none of a man's true desires.

Her last email was only a week ago – most of them were about a week apart, as if I was a pre-arranged session that she devoted herself to. I was her diary by proxy – almost an imaginary friend that she could tell her secrets to and not ever be judged or criticised.

And now I had come to life again.

Would she want to really see me? Or would she be horrified that her musings and inner-most thoughts were now known by another living human being?

I needed to be sure about this.

# Forgiveness

"Do it man!"

I knew Lee would say that. I needed to hear him say it, even though I knew what he would say. I needed his approval, I needed his permission. I needed his guidance.

For so long I had lost the true meaning of friendship with Lee. I thought that my degradation into hedonism and, ultimately, despair would bring me closer to him and the way we were in our younger years. But it forced us apart further – until he did the one thing that I would also have done for him.

He loved me.

We partied hard in our late teens and early twenties – but that was a long time ago now. Those bonds were hard to break, for sure, but I partied with lots of people over the years yet where were they when I needed them? Hell, I can't even remember their names!

But Lee stood by me as I had stood by him. And now I needed his endorsement, his sanctioning of this.

"Look Mick, Tina's gone and you're always going to love her. But you can't wallow in grief forever. If this woman you mentioned is all that you think she is, then you're a fool to yourself and burden to others if you don't follow this up."

"I know, but what if she is horrified at the thought? I felt like I was her therapist or something, maybe she won't want to see me?"

"How old are you? Come on, you sound like you're 16 or something – we went through that shit in high school!"

I didn't want to be reminded of the awkwardness that was the high school years.

Boys pretending to be men, growing into their bodies.

Testosterone and expanding muscles outgrowing the immature mind.

Hormones raged and self-doubt bit like a shark.

I was hopeless around girls back then and Lee was the natural – I followed in his coat tails and took what I could get.

"I'm just worried about making a dick of myself," my newfound honesty allowed me to finally admit my true reason for hesitation. Fear.

Well, it was fear that got me into this in the first place, so it was somewhat ironic that it was fear that showed me the path to escape.

"What have you got to lose Mick? You know what I say mate: Beware the man who has nothing to lose, because he has got NOTHING to lose."

Lee smiled with the intention of being enigmatic and profound – and almost nailed it.

"That doesn't make any sense Lee – you're no Dalai Lama."

"And you're no Mother Theresa so there we are!"

The brief moments of incursions into the sublime nature of Lee's inner thoughts and machinations were worth their infrequent visits. Everyone enjoys Christmas because it's only once a year – same thing.

Lee returned to his shallow self, relating a story I'd heard a few times before of an ex-girlfriend from high school that he had caught up with only a few months ago. He continued his oration unabated and oblivious to the fact he'd told me this before. I didn't listen, but I could hear him. I nodded and smiled when it seemed appropriate to do so, but my mind was elsewhere as I contemplated how I was going to do this.

I had started to come to terms with Tina's death and Lee was 100% correct. I would always love her, no matter what. Her passing cemented a place in my heart for her that could never be taken away. No passage of time could weather it, no eons of emotion would ever wear it down. This was impervious to the tempest of feelings that we experience throughout our lifetime.

Tina's memory was set and incorruptible – her death had sealed that.

And, with acceptance, came forgiveness.

I forgave myself and I felt the weight lift from me. A black cloak of guilt rose and my shoulders seemed free of the additional weight of this cancerous demon that had consumed me.

Somewhere I hoped that she forgave me too.

# Deja Vu

When the reply email came back, I was stunned – air escaped me and I forgot to replace it. Desiree existed – she was real. My long-winded and overly edited reply to her volumes of confessions, inner-most-thoughts and desires was sent and I checked the laptop every few minutes for a reply.

For three hours I checked.

I was 15 again, waiting by the phone for a girl to ring me back (like Andrea McFarlane said she would but never, ever did).

The inbox gathered sporadic spam as I continued checking – hoping beyond all else that I hadn't scared her away with my actual existence. Then, just as I had started to give up hoping that I see a response, the bold subject " **RE:Contact** " appeared in the inbox.

To: Michael@MichaelForster.com.au

From: Desiree Jenkins

Re: Contact

Hello stranger!

OMG – I can't believe you finally replied. All this time I didn't think you'd ever read any of this crap and now it's like you're back from the dead. I have so much I want to talk about and I'm sure you do too (or maybe not?). This is actually the third draft of a reply – the first two ran into several pages but I figure we can save all that for when we meet.

Yes – that's an answer. I'd love to catch up again. Meet at Le Figaro's at 8 on Friday?

Cheers, D xxx

It was only a few lines but I had committed this to memory. My recovering mind, bombarded with fragments of the past that sporadically returned as my brain recovered from the poisonous cocktail of alcohol and regret, was now consumed with apprehension of this meeting.

Actually, a date. A proper date – the first one since before I was married.

Yes there had been drunken trysts and one-night-stands of hotel sex amidst altered states of consciousness, but nothing that involved the effort and concentration that an actual "date" did. I had no idea what to expect, the unknown a fear that brought back hints of a demon I had banished.

Right then was when I would have been looking for a drink – just a cheeky one to settle my nerves and provide some false courage. Since I eschewed all imbibing of an alcoholic nature, the clarity of mind was a revelation. Like the prodigal son, it was received with open arms and sincere appreciation. But that didn't mean that its alter ego – the devil himself – disappeared entirely. He still lurked – within every doubt, behind every fear, and encouraging every regret.

Could I last the night?

As at 7.40PM I had done okay. I was driving along Stock Road, my heart pounding at 200bpm, the headlights shone through the steadily falling rain which lashed in diagonally as a typical Perth winter South Westerly cold front blew in from the Southern Indian Ocean. Leaves from the flaking eucalypts flicked across the beams of light that preceded the car, small brown flashes that whipped past me in the darkness. Even in this rain, I knew I'd be at the restaurant before her and that suited me fine.

From the darkness, a flashing vision. A movement – someone?

Instinctively I swerved away from it, the steering wheel turning, the wheels turning, but the car continued straight ahead.

The vision disappeared as soon as it had appeared – was it even there?

And now the car aquaplaned – sliding across the blacktop and out of control. I gripped the steering wheel tightly; delusions of control. Now I was a passenger.

The soft slide of the roadway gave way to bump of dirt as I left the road, the wheels dug into the moistened sand, the car's momentum flipping it upside down.

And the world stopped.

Time froze and loose items in the car suspended in mid air, like they would in a space capsule.

Then, something new – in the car.

It was Tina.

She was sitting next to me.

"It's okay Michael," she said, her voice an aural elixir that shook me to the core.

"But, you're dead," I stammered out, incredulous yet awestruck.

"Yes, I am dead. But you're not, are you?" She smiled that cheeky smile, one corner of her top lip more curled than the other, her smile lop-sided and so damned sexy.

"No, this can't be happening surely?" Even I couldn't believe how stupid that question sounded.

"You're right it's not," and Tina tipped her head back and laughed, revealing her slender neck that just begged me to kiss it, to run my fingers through her hair from the base of her skull to her scalp, massaging and caressing as I kissed the nape of her neck slowly.

"But..." I couldn't move and I could barely talk. Suspended animation had befallen everything except this apparition of beauty beside me – a vision that was tearing me up.

Then, abruptly, she stopped laughing. "You've got to get on with your life Michael – please don't waste it."

"I miss you so fucking much," I tried, but eyes welling with emotion but unable to produce any tears.

"I miss you too baby, but I want you to be happy." Tina reached out her thin delicate hands to my face and I could feel her soft skin brush over my newly shaved stubble, her fingernails flicking on the course hairs. I could smell her moisturizer.

"I'm supposed to be on a date but I don't know if I can ever love her like I loved you." I thought this was true but I didn't really know. What do I say to my dead wife when I'm on the way to my first date?

"You don't have to. You'll always love me and I always loved you, but you have to move on."

I'd heard this before, but it had more resonance now. "How? How do I do that?" I asked.

"I don't know. I don't have that answer." She withdrew her hand and looked out through the windscreen at the trees hanging from the suspended earth, the rain falling slightly upwards as the stars shone below.

"It hurts so much, not having you around."

"Please Michael – please live your life. It wasn't your fault." Tina's eyes seemed colder now, more distant.

"Yes it was".

"No it wasn't – it was simply an accident." I waited for elucidation, but nothing came.

"Are you okay?" I had no idea if a dead person could feel anything but I just wanted her to be free from pain.

"Yes, I'm fine. And, something else you should know, I forgive you."

With that the roof crumpled as time restarted. The car flipped and Tina disappeared.

Sounds reflected earlier descriptions (read: premonitions) of them:

A demonic harmonic.

An elongated crunch.

A discordant rhapsody.

I had experienced this before – mentally. This was déjà vu to the extreme.

Screaming emanated from within me as the glass sliced and diced me, my arms flailing and slapping.

I was upside down again as the car continued the rollover.

Almost immediately a tree approached with supersonic force, straight into the passenger side door. As the metal wrapped around the solid trunk, the car split in two and I passed out.

My last sight was Tina's face disappearing, mouthing the words "I forgive you" as she faded from my mind's eye.

# Beginnings

I am becoming more conscious now. A day ago – or maybe it was a week ago, I have no concept of time in here – the doctor gave me the details of the crash. Not the cause, just the consequences.

The irony of my situation did not escape me.

Just when I was regaining control of my life, I lose control again.

If there's a God, he (or she) has a wicked sense of humour.

The hospital is institution white, the beeps and whirrs of machines punctuate the stillness in my private room – one of the benefits of private health care. Medicated air breathes into the stark impersonal room with monotonous regularity, a wheezing industrial lung that feeds the building's occupants.

My pain is non-existent but I have been told that's not going to last. They will wean me off this sedative as I start to heal, before I develop a tolerance to and dependence for it. Too late - I was trying to give up the altered states of consciousness when this all happened. Look how that turned out.

My eyes open again, the pink of the glare through my eyelids giving way to the brilliant white of the room and the lux amplification of fluorescent lighting. The brightness hits me violently, forcing me to blink as I adjust. In the flickering vision I can see someone leave the room – a glimpse of black hair flowing.

The disinfectant smell of the hospital isn't here as I expect. It has a replacement smell, an overpowering scent that I know from my dreams.

Desiree.

Her ghost haunts this room too, leaving behind a spectral trail of olfactory perfection. This aroma, addictive and sexual.

I'm so close to her but she is not to be seen.

I'm alone and I can see a dinner on the bedside table – mine and wasted. I can't eat.

I look down the bed and see one leg suspended in plastered traction. My left leg, the one that I had an arthroscopy on many years ago, is now encased within the plaster, several names emblazoned across it in support.

I see Ryan: "Get well soon bro!"

I see Ryan's wife Sophie: "We miss you Michael – hope you're better soon."

I see Adrian: "My friend – please get well soon."

I see Lee: "Stop lounging around looking for attention! Get well buddy!"

I also see where my right leg should be.

I am lucky – a below knee amputation is much easier to deal with than above the knee, or so I am told.

The doctors say I can get a prosthetic limb.

The doctors say I will be able to do almost everything the same once I get used to the leg.

The doctors say I am one lucky bastard.

They don't know the half of it.

I am fully aware of the irony – my crippled emotions finally gave way and resulted in a crippled body. But I guess I did get off lightly.

Tina didn't.

The memory of her in the car that night is still vivid, it haunts me even when I'm awake. I can sense her presence; feel the soft press of her fingers as she stroked my cheek. But I can't smell her scent anymore – only Desiree's.

I don't want her face to disappear from me – I don't want her to get blurrier and more distant. I don't want to have to wear new glasses so she can snap back into focus again. But maybe that's what her forgiveness means? Maybe that's just part of the deal.

If so, then I can live with that and life can go on. Yes it will go on with one leg less and a part of my heart that will forever be enshrined to Tina. But there's still plenty left for me and, maybe, someone else.

I pick up the notebook and start writing down some questions, prompts for a story that is mulling:

"What does forgiveness mean?"

"How do you truly say goodbye?"

"When are you completely sorry?"

It's forming and it might become something. The short story anthology, Adrian tells, me, is a goer and that will help me get through this.

So too will Desiree.

I put the notebook down as the door opens and Desiree walks in.
