

The Drag of an Alligator

by L. T. Hewitt

The Sonnet

1st

I met the love of my life today. I know there are many people meeting many loves of their lives everyday, and indeed some people who meet a new love of their life every day, but I know this person is the one love of my life.

She is pretty sweet. She is pretty and sweet. Her hair has a golden glow, a sort of soft red copper, but it had the value of gold. I sit across from her and wonder what led to my being here.

In the philosophy of physics, one of the major curiosities is determinism: the belief that every event is the direct physical result of the previous physical events, with the mind having no impact, and free will being non-existent. Sand lies on a beach, its precise position resulting from the wind blowing it from a different position; the wind caused by hot and cold air dancing around the world.

The size of the sand is caused by the waves smashing rocks into tiny pieces; the waves are caused by the pull of the moon and the drag of the sun; the position of the moon and the sun and the water and the rocks all come down to the placement of particles which have been crashing and grouping before all life, all thought, and before the possible potential for free will in the universe.

To a determinist, nothing is changeable. Everything that happens in the universe has been in place since the beginning. Because of the precise details of the Big Bang, we arrived at the universe we have today. I am endlessly thankful the Big Bang happened in the way it did, so I arrived here.

I met her a second ago and a thousand infinities have passed since then. I am here, staring longingly at her, and like a fool I have no words to say. Eventually, I struggle out 'Hi' in a sort of backwards gulp. It ends up sounding like I have a horrible disease that would repel even the most adamant stalker, but she still looks at me and smiles. I have done well, it seems.

'Hi,' she says back. We are standing together in a bar in Fichleke, where I live. That sounded stupid. I live in Fichleke and the bar is my regular haunt. Well, I've never been here before, but I will make it my haunt from now on. 'The Dead Queen': the place I met my love.

'Hi,' I say again. You idiot! You just said that. 'How are you?'

'I'm good, thanks,' she says. She's smiling as though my idiocy doesn't bother her. She's more intelligent than me by far. I can tell. An ordinary person might be confused about why I repeated myself. An intelligent person would point out my idiocy. But she in her supreme wisdom merely smiled and understood that nothing would be achieved by pointing out my failings, and accepted that we both accepted that I was useless.

She is approachable. I love that about her. She's smiling still. I don't know what to do. 'Would you like to get a drink sometime?'

'Would you?' I ask stupidly, colossal words of foul stench and taste infecting those around me with moronic sound. 'Would you like to get a drink?'

Again, she doesn't seem confused; she just smiles.

'There's a bar here,' I say. 'What do you drink?'

'I meant sometime... Like tomorrow evening?' Of course she does.

'Yes. Tomorrow does have an evening. Would you like something to drunk— to get drunk on, or even to drink, now?'

'That would be nice.' She isn't daunting.

'What's your poison?' What's your poison? I'm not a member of the Brat Pack.

She asks for a raptor – a kind of cocktail made with brandy and cointreau, manipulated to form a vibrant brown pool in a flute. I order one. We drink together and some inner part of me I have never met before is smiling, laughing. I can't control it. I want to kiss her, I want to love her, and I hold back everything into a gentle smirk.

She sees what's happening over the top of her glass. She feels the same, I know it. She feels within her a new emotion. And that connects us. We are bound in our desires, held by our emotions and joined by our joining.

I never come to bars, yet here I am. I never pick up girls, yet here she is. They never like me, yet she stays. She wants to be by my side and she is. And I see in this moment how we should be. I should be open to myself.

'What do you do,' I ask nervously, 'when you want something? When you need something?'

She leans over and gently presses her red lips to my ear. 'I have it,' she says.

I search my brain for the recollection of how one is supposed to interact when engaged with speaking to a charismatic member of the opposite sex. 'What sort of music do you like?'

Whilst I wrack my mind for the part of consciousness which suggested that was a good question, in order to fully punish the neurons associated with such a clumsy and clichéd question, she responds with tact, 'I like a lot of music really. I know that's kind of an annoying response.' She laughs self-deprecatingly, the way I do when I realise I've spoken at all.

'That's a fine response.'

'If I had to pick a favourite genre, that would be difficult. But I know which bands I like.'

She tells me, and the fact that I can predict each band before she tells me makes me adore her even more.

'I like all those bands I tell her. I'd love to have seen them live.'

'Me too,' she says enthusiastically. 'Unfortunately I've picked up the awful habit of only liking bands which are no longer together.'

'And solo singers who died long ago in a fit of youth,' I agree.

'I know. It's a pity, isn't it?'

She takes another sip of her drink, and I smile at the way she timidly closes her lips at the end of each gulp, out of fear she should open her mouth too wide and appear to be yawning at me, with the ultimate effect that each drink is sealed with a loving kiss.

'It is such a shame that talent so frequently leads to self-destruction,' she comments.

'I wonder why it is.'

'I often wonder the same thing. What is it about the young and accomplished that leads to such a painful trend of suicides and addiction?'

'Maybe artists are so accustomed to criminal levels of shyness, that achieved success within one's lifetime is too much to bear.'

'Maybe that's what it is.'

'Like the 27 Club,' I say, wondering if it is wrong to have such a jovial topic about mortality this early into a conversation with a hypothetical lover. 'People die far too young, because youth is a heavy weight to handle. Maturity offers so much respect while innocence can be an intellectual drag.'

Donna smiles and I wonder for a split second if she is laughing at what I've just told her; but her smile is too kindly and optimistic Is this optimism an indication that she wasn't listening to my bleakness at all? She could hardly be blamed for ignoring me as I bore her with tales of societal self-abuse. But she is listening intently. With each upwards inflection, her eyebrows raise in concerted concentration. With each downfall in my speech, her mouth sinks in appreciative concern.

With every possible element of body language, she suggests to me that she cares absolutely what I have to say at all times.

My internal queries are addressed when she finally, after an instant of my wild fox-like thoughts rushing by, she tells me what's on her mind.

'I love the way you use your words,' she says. I quiver with excitement at the thought of another human being appreciating the beautiful expression of life and death through prosaic interaction like I do. 'I'm thrilled by every single one of your thoughts.'

'Thank you.' That is all I have to say. I want to loudly express my vaulting pleasure and scream my passion for her mind from the rooftops, but I know the only appropriate interaction is a repeated: 'Thank you.'

Part of my brain keeps telling me this isn't me, but I look around and I can't tell who else it is. Maybe this is my life now. Maybe I go to bars and pick up women. Maybe I won't need to. I hope that's the case. I really like, as she sits ahead of me and agrees to talk about whatever interests us both. Maybe she is the love of my life. But this is just a bar meeting.

2nd

'Hi,' I say – a stupid phrase. I say it to reassure us both that my arrival was definite, and not some foolish mistake, or a clone, or myself from the future, or whatever stupid alternative there is to my being definite in my arrival.

She knows I'm here. She's certain of that. I suppose I'm only reassuring myself that I've arrived. It seems I'm not very convincing. 'Hi.'

She's smiling again. That beautiful smiles that does more for me than the greatest remedy. 'So, what do you do?' she asks.

'Well, I try not to do anything bad.'

She laughs. It's always best when they take a mistake as a joke. 'What do you do for a living?'

Don't say 'not die'. 'Persist.' Damn it! '...at working as a psychiatrist.'

'Ah, so do you deal with people who have weird mental issues?'

'Yes. Although it's mostly just dull people. Victims of abuse, that sort of thing.' Don't reveal your twisted sense of humour just yet. 'Sorry, that's not really funny or appropriate, is it?'

'Well, I've a problem with my mind at the moment;' she says, before leaning over to whisper it my ear, 'I can't stop thinking about you.'

I gulp audibly. 'What do you do?'

'Everything.'

'What do you do for a living?'

'Isn't everything living?'

'What career path did you choose?'

'I'm an actress mostly. Do you know the advert for Tip-Ex?'

'The one where the guy feels like he made a mistake with his life, so goes to erase it.'

'Yeah, do you know it?'

A moment of silence. 'Well, I don't really need to answer now, do I?'

'Right, right. I was the girl in that.'

'What girl?'

'The one he erases.'

'Right, right. I'd forgotten about her.'

She finishes off her raptor. 'I guess I am a good actress, then.'

I ask if she's still thirsty; she is; I go to get her another raptor.

It seems to be going well so far. I just hope I don't reveal my nerdy side. I return with her drink.

'What's your opinion of sci-fi movies?' she asks. 'Because I was wondering if you wanted to see that new one everyone's going on about.'

Marry me. 'We can do that. If you still want to meet up with me after this, that is.'

We talk about our mutual interests. It seems there are many. We both like baseball. Her favourite writer – as mine – is Fitzgerald, though she agrees that The Great Gatsby painfully overshadows the rest of his work. I ask what she does in her free time, and she replies, 'Free time? I work as a failed actress. That's my free time; everything that isn't work my occupation is my life.'

I love the way she uses her words. My speech is photographic, descriptive; hers is painted, an infinite mural of passion on every topic.

'TV?' I ask, though it's not really a question. 'What television programmes do you like?'

'I watch the news, and it makes me sad. But everything makes me sad when I think about the bare facts.'

'Do you avoid the news because you cannot stand the facts?'

'I watch the news, but the facts make me sad and the lies make me angry.'

'Is there any balance between the two?'

'I watch Al Jazeera, which takes a while to get to, but is always a refreshing approach to reporting.

'I've never watched Al Jazeera,' I comment. 'What's different about it?'

'The difference,' she replies, 'is that nobody has to be the enemy.' She sees the enthralled but bewildered expression on my face, and continues: 'In most European and North American news channels – those we're used to – the East is the enemy, whether that's Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam, or any other country our governments have gone to war with in recent times. In many Middle Eastern news channels, it the West who is to be hated. On Al Jazeera, I usually find there's a balance, backed up by reason and evidence.'

'Do you not watch any fiction? I'm into science-fiction shows.'

'So am I, but only when they make me think. The facts make me sad, and fictions make me distant. I like the point between the two, where we live in joy and never have to worry.'

Perhaps too soon, I say, 'That's how you make me feel.'

I know everything about her but her name. I ask.

'Donna.' That sweet and beautiful Donna. That name summarised her. A poem in visuality: the letters turn to reverse, but end up somewhere new. She is a mystery in a study and I want to know more.

'Steve,' not that she cares.

'Steve,' she repeats, smiling. 'That's a nice name.'

'It's nothing in comparison to Donna.'

'It's assertive,' she claims. 'Steve. Steve. Steve! Steeeve. STEVE. There are so many ways you can say it.'

I laugh. 'I suppose there are. I'm usually just referred to as (Steve),' I say, half-whispering my own name, 'if I am referred to at all.'

She takes a slow sip of her raptor, and it is clear she is taking a lot of pleasure in the taste of the drink; whereas many drinkers might order a cocktail for its alcoholic content, I can see that Donna is content to drink purely for the sake of the taste, with any chemical effects being merely a footnote to the beverage.

'What's your favourite animal?' she asks.

'I'm not sure,' I say. 'Why do you ask?'

'I've been auditioning for a role in a TV show. It's just a small part. One or two episodes.'

'Oh, that's good.'

'It certainly would be. The part is a zookeeper. It's a fantasy program which briefly features characters going to the zoo. For the BBC. It would be excellent if I could get it.'

'It really would be. Best of luck to you.' We clinked our glasses against each other. 'Did they ask for your favourite animal?'

'Sort of. They said I'd be in the exhibit with any animal, and which animal would it be if I could chose?'

'And what did you go for?'

'An alligator. I don't know why. It was just instinctive.'

'I think that's a good choice.'

'You do?'

'I like alligators. Now you've said that, I think I'd go for alligators as my favourite too.'

'Why?'

'Because they're so powerful. They can do so much damage, but most of the time they just laze around in rivers. I admire that.'

'That's a good argument.'

She laughed. 'I'm glad I chose an alligator, actually.'

We shared a wide smile.

'Donna, I must confess—'

'A good confession I hope?'

'That's for you to decide. Hopefully you'll think it's a good confession.'

'I'll try my best.'

'You don't need to try. You just need to be truthful.'

'Then I'll be truthful.'

'Donna,' I say again, 'I like you. I mean, I really really like you.'

Her grins broadens. 'You have such a childlike air,' she says.

'Hopefully that's a good thing.'

'It's definitely a good thing,' she says, and my heartbeat speeds up. 'I've never understood all this I like you and You like me stuff.'

'I'm sorry.'

'You've done nothing wrong. I appreciate the sentiment.'

'What would you say, then?'

'I'd say I have romantic feelings for you, and if it goes well, I love you.'

Nervously, I ask, 'Is that what you're saying?'

'Yes. It's definitely what I'm saying. In your words I like you; in my words I have romantic feelings for you.'

'That's awfully formal of you,' I say as flirtatiously as possible. 'But, of course, I appreciate the sentiment.' The greedy smiles never leave our faces this entire time. From the first acknowledgement of emotion, we are grinning ear to ear with the greatest joy in the world.

'Sorry if I'm too formal.'

'I never said it was a bad thing.'

'Good. Because I would never think it's a bad thing to be formal.'

'I find it more of a strain to be informal.'

'I couldn't agree more,' she says quickly; she is in a rush to share as many of our mutual opinions as possible; likewise, I am ever speeding up in a rush to fuse our two minds into one compassionate computer. 'It's awfully funny how the informal is rarely informative.'

'I love your use of words.'

'I love your love of words.'

'I love to love words.'

'I love that you're not afraid to talk about what you love.'

'I love that you don't think love is something to be afraid of.'

Our brains think on the same frequency and our hearts beat in time; I find it near impossible to focus on which words are coming out of which of our mouths, but I know I agree with everything that is said; in one sweet symphony of symbiotic speech, a romance is blossoming too quickly to document; she tells me the poets I love, and I tell her I love poetry; I mention that I love colourful and artistic films, and she mentions Kubrick, Bergman and Fellini before I can even begin to ask the directors she admires; but it is not name-dropping; every instance of a mentioned mentor is much more meaningful; she tells me what she loves, and she can describe with a detailed passion her admiration for a particular shot from Through a Glass Darkly.

'You're so open,' I say, unsure of my own meaning; but there is no cause for concern, for she has already understood what I meant.

'I'm open because I have no fears about what I love. If I have a passion

'And you have passions just like mine.'

'Without passions, what is there to live for?'

'Without somebody to share those passions, what is there to talk for?'

We talk at this pace for hours on end, and I am falling into a world of happiness I never knew existed. As the Dead Queen is near closing, our lips are only inches apart in our desire to communicate our minds with no physical barrier; but I am a gentleman, and to kiss so early would be uncouth.

'What would you call this?' I ask.

'I would call this strong attraction.'

'Is this a date?'

'I make it a date. But we should plan for another date.'

'When?'

'I don't know,' she says. 'I want it to be as soon as possible, but I don't know if that's considered socially acceptable.'

'Who cares what society thinks?'

'I want to see you tomorrow. Is that okay?'

'It's perfect. Should we return to this same bar?'

'Absolutely.'

We walk a long way through town at night, as I walk her courteously to her door.

I walk along these streets I used to walk along alone. Now, with my equal by my side, the old slate slabs are lighter at my feet, and the passage of my body through the universe is no longer a drag. In fact, the knowledge of Donna with my extinguishes all hints of loneliness from the world, and I know that, whatever happens, there is someone who understands me.

'Do you listen to a lot of music?' asks Donna.

'I hear a lot of music, but I never listen to it,' I reply.

'How so?'

'I never focus on music. Music, to me, is always the background of any situation. I walk along streets and have a faint orchestra at the back of my mind.'

'Like the soundtrack to a film?'

'Yes. A lot like that. But always fitting and never cheesy.'

'It needs to be a good soundtrack,' she agrees. 'If you want a good life, you need a good soundtrack. Not like in Cemetary Gates.'

I laugh. 'I think there was one good song in that whole film. And even then it was out of place.'

'Some piece of indie music alongside a zombie's head being removed with a shovel. Not a soundtrack anybody would want to their life.'

'I'm never sure how I feel about songs in films,' Donna tells me, and I nod vigorously in agreement. 'I prefer orchestral scores. Music which fills the void but remains unintrusive.' She sighs at the woes of bad art, and my heart sighs in tandem. 'That's why I can never bear a montage.'

'Me neither!' Realising the force

'Don't apologise. Never apologise for your passion. So few people care about the details of perfect art. I'm glad you're one of those few.'

'Thank you.' I have nothing else to say, though nothing else needs to be said. We walk without words for a while, though the term silence is frightfully innaccurate; we both know how the other feels, and we are both content to enjoy the beauty of Fichleke without having to corrupt the town with unnecessary speech. When the time is right, Donna smiles and resumes the conversation afresh.

'What about this street?' she asks, gesturing towards the path we were going down, Charlotte Street, which is one of the main streets in Fichleke. It forms the rift between the centre, where the shops are, and the residential area where people live. Charlotte Street has some beautiful but expensive accommodation, and some niche but cheap shops. All the buildings have beautifully mismatched façades, cut-up from the wealth of European history to form a distorted narrative of quaint town life.

I think for a moment about the ideal music to accompany this stroll. 'It would have to be someone Romantic.'

'Ooh, la la,' Donna whips.

'Romantic Era,' I clarify, though Donna's smirk betrays that she knew this, and secretly has a far more vast knowledge of musical history than I could ever hope to know.

'What nationality?' she asks. 'In this Romantic Era, the world was a lot less globalised. Nations were more strictly defined – probably for the worse, given the wars which ensued – and so the specific cultural makeup of a country more greatly affected a composer than it does today.'

'I suppose,' I say, looking up at the majestic pentagonal frontispieces of the more beautiful houses, 'they would have to be Dutch.

I ask her why she wants to be an actress.

'Well, you're the psychiatrist; you tell me.'

'Well...' I begin, realising there's no possible positive outcome to this conversation, 'I wouldn't want to say.'

She laughs. 'Let me guess: I have unachieveable ambitions, and I secretly feel lost in this small town, and need to rise up above everyone else, so I set myself unobtainable goals?'

From the look on my face, she can already tell that she's spot on.

'I could be a psychiatrist,' she says, with a cheeky smirk. 'It's all easy-peasy.'

'Pretty much,' I laugh. 'Unless there's something really complicated, the brain is fairly straightforward.'

'How do you mean? Surely the brain in very complex.'

'Not in my line of work. I deal with the more basic problems: people who are feeling a bit depressed, usually for an explainable reason. The people with chemical depression are much more developed area than I'm trained for.'

We walk for some time, having reached a point where the need for words has passed us by and we can blissfully wander without aim; the purpose, beyond travel, is to take in the pleasure of each other's company.

When we finally approach her door, we gently hug and there are worlds of emotion in that delicate embrace. We say goodnight, and she reluctantly closes the door behind her. I miss her already, and I know that all night her name will be on my mind. Donna. My darling Donna. Her name was Donna and this was our date.

3rd

Her name is Donna. I met her two days ago and she warmed my heart. She has a sort of orange and red richness to her hair. And her eyes – her eyes! – they are honeyed pools of gold. Her lips oppose this. They are deepest red, with a silver lining.

When she looks at me, she reveals she wants to know all. I tell her everything I can think to say, and it satisfies me to know she might care. Her eyes tickle out of me my every thought and emotion.

Her mind is a beautiful well of passion. The world doesn't bother her like it does us mere mortals. Aggression doesn't haunt her.

We discuss our loves, and we both care for music with the intricacies of a tapestry.

'Music,' she says, 'is not something to be enjoyed quickly and easily. Neither can music be made more powerful by prolonging. Any great work of art should be concise, and explain its message unhesitantly and unashamedly.'

'What about mysterious artworks?' I ask. 'What about the paintings that don't have one clear moral or story to tell?'

'Those are the best kinds of art. Every artwork is saying something, otherwise it isn't art. But every artwork should be varied in its depth and scope, otherwise it isn't worth dwelling upon.'

'Do you think all art needs to be dwelt upon?'

She thinks about this. 'It's not a prerequisite of art. But is there any work of art you love which didn't stick with you?'

'I suppose not. If it doesn't draw my attention and force me to think, an artwork is not really important to me.'

One of my favourite songs is 'In the Air Tonight' by Phil Collins. It is hardly a unique choice, and is not so individual and personal a choice as Donna's musical loves.

Donna explained to me how her musical tastes are formed based on songs she knows are personal to her. A very acquired taste, and her taste is what spurs her to chase perfection. This is why her interests are generally far from what is popular. The music she listens to is specific to her feelings. She has selected these choices out of all the entire history of music, popular or obscure.

But there is a part of me which feels as though I have a somewhat refined attraction towards 'In the Air Tonight'. I like the song because of what it means to me.

When I hear other people discuss the song, they have a different focus from me. To other people, the focus seems to be the climax of the rapid drumming. They long for that moment when all the sounds of the world clatter into one final culmination.

Although this is evidently the climax, that has never been my favourite part of the song. To me, the delight of the song lies in the gentle, melodious minutes leading up to that moment. The drum solo itself is of little value, serving only to conclude what is on its own a glorious work of gentle singing and ruminating.

A friend once asked me if I would be happy listening to the song if it cut off just before the climax. I gave this some thought and decided that I wouldn't. But I don't need the climax. I simply need the thrill of the ride. I would be eternally happy if the calmness of the build-up were the perpetual theme tune to my life.

I love the way Donna is always a surprise. She is unpredictable, but in a completely unthreatening way. When we met today, she had earphones in, as she was listening with a smile on her face to a delicately selected theme.

When I approached, she removed her earphones, and in the moment before she switched off the music, I heard the most uplifting violins billowing out.

It strikes me that even on this crisp February morning, with the leaves of frozen blackness all praying to her feet, she can cast a look of radiance merely by persisting.

She's looking at me now. Her eyes go through my head and see the world beyond. Perhaps she is wondering what the man across the street is feeling; or how optimistic or pessimistic a mother in Uganda is about the future, as she carries a bucket of water through deserts to her thirsty family; or merely what she will have to drink at the pub. Donna is dizzying in her command of the mind. If I saw and felt the world with the emotion of an emotive leader, I could never cope. But the wistful look in Donna's face tells me she feels more than the drones who flee by, caring not for compassion or currents. She has nothing to say publicly about her thoughts, but I can hear every beautiful song and poem ever written in her eyes.

'How are you?' she asks. She cares.

'Better now.'

We take a seat in the Dead Queen. It's a cosy place, and we place ourselves on a collaboration of sofas in the corner of the wooden room with its planked walls. It would ordinarily seem a waste to have two sofas when we would only be sitting on one, but this was nothing ordinary. This was special, because Donna was there with me. We gazed into each other's eyes.

'What brought you to Fichleke?' asks Donna.

'I've always lived here,' I say. 'I grew up on these waters.'

'Does it tire you? Do you want to move somewhere else?'

'Not especially. If I can feel something new or beloved, that can happen anywhere, be it Fichleke or abroad.'

'I know how you mean. Unfortunately, though, I'm well-travelled.'

'Why is that unfortunate?'

'Because of the methods,' she say. 'There are so many exciting ways of travelling around the world, yet we always move from plate to plate in a plane.'

'Is that so bad?'

'The Earth is polluted enough without everyone flying around in search of themselves.'

'I suppose so,' I say.

'Does it make you sad to know the planet is dying?' she asks wearily.

'Of course,' I respond, and I can see in her eyes how she feels the pain of every fallen tree, and knows the last thought and first fear of all extinct creatures. 'Of course I do. It's the only planet we have.'

'I fear that's part of the problem,' she tells me. 'Many who care for the Earth do so only out of self-interest. If we did have the option of other planets to go to, would that make it okay to destroy this one?'

'Of course not.'

She snaps out of her painfully compassionate state, and looks into my eyes. 'Sorry to be so macabre.'

'It's not macabre. It's true.'

'The truth is often macabre.'

'Yes, and the truth is necessary,' I say, and she appears to agree. 'There's nothing admirable about mental disengagement.'

She smiles her perfectly crafted smile. 'I'm glad another person agrees.' She hugs me and I feel her physical warmth for the first time; it perfectly complements her emotional warmth.

I whisper, 'I love your use of macabre.'

She laughs.

'I mean it.'

'I know you do.'

'Why does that make you laugh?'

'Because it's so unusual to find someone who cares about words as much as I do.' Another word emerges from her unrelenting mind. 'So anomalous.'

'Perfect choice,' I taunt affably.

She tells me, 'There are so many beautiful words in the universe, and it is such a pity when the poetry of speech is dismissed.'

'I couldn't agree more,' I say, daring to squeeze her tighter into the embrace; she responds with enthusiasm, holding me as close as our bones will allow.

When the hug ends amicably, I take a moment to remember where the main stream of conversation had ended. 'We were talking about travel.'

'And I was telling you I take no pride in being well-travelled.'

'You were,' I say. 'Isn't travel a successful method of self-discovery?'

'"Without going out of your door, you can know all things of Earth."'

'Is that a philosophical quotation?' I ask.

'It's The Beatles,' she tells me. 'So, yes.'

I can't remember the last time Donna didn't appear to be smiling. Even when her thoughts were lowly, her twinkling spirit rose up everyone in the surrounding environment.

'I'm really glad I met you, Donna.'

'Me too.'

'No, you don't understand. You understand me. Nobody else does. I feel alone. Even with everyone I've ever been with, I've felt as though they didn't get who I was and what I was trying to do. But you... You make me who I am. We intertwine our personalities and the end result is the perfect couple.'

I'd said too much.

'That is, if you wanted us to be a couple.'

'Well, yeah. I mean, soon we're going to start doing stuff together.'

'We already do stuff together.'

'I mean more stuff. Different activities, if you know what I mean.'

'Oh. Like going to the cinema? I was thinking we should go tomorrow. There'll be hardly anyone there, and if we text 'SPOCK' to 01543 496493, we can get buy-one-get-one-half-price tickets.'

She sighs a soft, smooth sigh, though I couldn't understand why she was upset; the tickets would cost less, after all.

'I'll pay for you,' I offered. She still looks upset.

'What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' she states, although it was pretty clear there was something.

'What's wrong, Donna? I thought you liked science-fiction films.'

'I do. It's just... I don't know what to expect from them.'

'It depends what sort of quality the film is.'

'I didn't mean the film.' I expect her to laugh, but she looks slightly sad.

'I don't want you to be upset, Donna. I want to do everything I can to make you happy.'

She sighs again. 'I mean, I've heard of people going to the cinema before, as a sort of date.'

'Do you want it to be a date?' I ask.

'I don't know.'

'Well we'll do whatever you decide. I just want to make you happy.'

She smiles, and looks up at me again. 'Thank you.'

'If you don't want it to be too serious, that's fine.'

'I don't know. I like what we have. I like our romance. But I don't want it to be serious in that sort of way.'

'What sort of way?'

'I don't know. I want to go to the cinema with you, but only because I want to spend time with you. I don't like the expectation that we'll be sitting in the back row, making out all the time.'

'Well, that's not what I'm like. I'm not going to force myself upon you, if that's what you thought.'

'I didn't think you would.'

I gently stroke her shoulder and she smiles again. 'I just want to make you happy. I'm not going to kiss you unless you want me to. I want to spend time with you, but I like talking to you more than anything dirty.'

She turns and puts an arm around me. 'I'm so glad I met you.'

'I'm so glad I met you too.' I hold her tenderly, so we can feel each other breathing. 'I promise I'll do whatever it takes to make you happy.'

She smiles. 'Who is your favourite poet?' she asks.

'My favourite poet? Probably William Butler Yeats.'

'How formal. Most people don't say his full name.'

'Most people don't know his full name.'

'I do, but I never say it. I just say Yeats.'

'Do you have a favourite poet?' I ask.

'Not yet. I'm working on it.'

On the whole, Donna was as wonderful as ever; but the moment when she was sad broke my heart; it is essential that we are both there for each other, and knowing that she might be sad and I can do nothing to help is a horrible feeling; the more I talked to her about it, the better she seemed; but that one moment of doubt left me feeling helpless. I don't sleep much tonight. I fear my love is fleeting.

4th

The movie is Cemetary Gates – an unremarkable feature about some poets called John and Will fighting zombies in a churchyard. It is made remarkable only by the lady by my side, making my life complete with every laugh, every slight turn to me which says the major flaws with this film's plot, as well as the references to odes by these men, and her sweet smile as she draws the best beauty of this otherwise disgraceful planet. Well, that makes the film stand out for me, as well as the ponce who turns us at the end and uses the powers of witty thought to decapitate the undead priest.

Afterwards, we head out and I ask how the film was, but I only care about how she was and how she is still, and how and what she always will be.

'It was rubbish,' she says. She's right, but the film hardly mattered. I was only paying attention to her beauty.

'Yeah, same,' I remark, ignoring all thought for grammar and logic. She turns to me and I think she is going to say something sweet.

But she doesn't. Or, at least, I don't think she does. She says, 'When are we going to take our relationship to the next level?'

I imagine I'm looking quite uncomfortable. 'What do you mean?'

'Well... do more stuff.'

I go out on a limb. 'You mean like kiss?'

'Well, yeah.'

It's all right, then. It's more than all right.

I turn to the love of my life in the coolness of winter outside this dusty cinema. The rush and the push of wind whips her hair round. Her lashes attempt to hide away her insides, but her pearls of eyes sparkle through. And, with a warm and calm embrace, I hold her gently but firmly. I reach my head in, and I kiss her.

It is sweet. It warms me. It brings me the light I need to see clearly. She brings the life I need to breathe.

Nothing more can be said. We spend the next amazing afternoon together. We wander around for hours, we kiss and we cuddle, everywhere and at every time, with no thought for our surroundings. We head back to mine. This is all very well, and perfectly normal, I imagine. But the amazing thing is how we feel, and the behaviour associated. We don't speak the entire time. We do so not in silence: there is a rich tort of emotions filling the thin divide between us, and that speaks for us everything that need ever be said.

Eventually, at the end of sleepless infinities, we lie cuddled together on the small seat in my small apartment, and we are in awe at how so many infinities of beauty, wonder and joy can fill such a small space. But our feelings now exceed all that is known to be physical.

Every now and then I lean over and we kiss, or she turns back and she does so to me. Occasionally, we both go to kiss and put the full force of two paramours into a heartfelt exchange of feeling, though no pressure is needed. The simplest, calmest kiss is all that need ever be desired. But we need no kisses. A kiss is too much, too physical, too earthly to attempt to approach our current state. We lie beyond life and death, pleasure and pain, man and woman. This is an experience – a life, even – which rejects those. Those states of being are only points expressed by base desires: they are all part of the brain, chemicals reacting with each other to create sensations; we are now beyond all forms one may express with equations.

Holding melded hands, we wander away from the cinema and towards the riverside, where we traipse amongst dandelions and buttercups to get as close to the rhythmic trickle of the water idly flowing by.

She is full of opinions. She expresses her views unaggressively, but passionately. There is no topic I could put to her which we wouldn't then proceed to have hours and possibly weeks of delightfully deep discussions about.

'I prefer full albums to individual singles,' she says. 'That way you get a full range of emotions.'

I thought about this. About my experiences with music, and I realised that, of course, Donna was correct.

An album is designed to be an extended meditation on a range of topics; single was designed with mass appeal; speaking to everyone equally, and hence saying very little.

Singles were made to be bought on the basis of a catchy riff or a throwaway lyric which mentioned love but was completely unromantic; an album was never played on the radio in full, because an album's lesser-known tracks were too emotive to appear in public.

Besides, with a single, you know the song has been impersonally produced to appeal equally to everybody as it plays indifferently in the midst of a clothes shop. I like listening to music as I lie back on my bed and let the sound fill my otherwise empty head.

And I like even more to know that the music has been written with that scenario in mind.

I grinned broadly at her gleeful face and asked which Beatles song was her favourite.

'"Honey Pie",' she replied instantly. 'People often forget that lyrics are a form of poetry. In that song, you know they were thinking about poetry.'

'I'm not sure I know how that one goes.'

She pulled out her headphones and pushed one softly into my ear and the other into hers. The music that billowed out was a dreamy melody, well suited to our afternoon stroll.

'I like to make soundtracks to life. I want to have all the appropriate music available to me all the time, so I can have that musical backdrop ready at the push of a button.'

'Do you have the soundtrack ready?'

'I'm still perfecting it.'

'What if it is never perfect?' I ask.

'Don't you think it will be?'

'I wonder if, as life changes and we progress, the appropriate songs will remain appropriate.'

'I think I see where you're coming from.'

'The song you associate with an autumn walk through the woods, for instance, may change with time.'

'Maybe. I'm always trying to perfect the list, but it might be nicer if my job is never complete.'

We walk along, lost in thoughts, as she clings to my arm and the sounds of nature are temporarily our complete soundtrack.

Donna rests her head on my shoulder, and softly thinks aloud, 'We should go for a woodland walk in autumn.'

I agreed, but the realist in my head seizes the opportunity to take over. 'It would have to be autumn for that to happen.'

'I meant in the autumn.' She laughs. 'Although, if I had the power to change the season, that would be great.'

I am still confused, and furrow my brow in contemplation. 'Were you planning ahead to the autumn?'

'Is that a problem?'

'Not at all. So you want to be with me in the autumn?'

She looks hesitant; she realises she has said too much, and I try my hardest to make clear that she has said just the right amount.

'I'm sorry if you weren't thinking that far ahead,' she says.

'I assure you, I think further into the future than you do,' she says.

We talk for some time, until it is clear we are both embarrassed; both too keen to move forward, and both concerned that the other is scared off; it soon becomes clear that neither of us is afraid and that we both feeling very strongly about each other; we are both desperate to say the same thing; and we have both been holding back for too long.

And only one sentence in the English language, a select few words, had been set aside for us. A few measly words which meant nothing and made it nowhere near to our infinite bliss – these could not express how we now felt, but they were the only few words left which could begin to be applied as an attempt at accuracy.

'I love you.' And such words were our fate.

5th

I lie back on the floor of my bedroom. I stretch out and wait for the relaxation to take over. Although the floor is by no means soft, I feel a strange comfort at being so pleasantly still, with no worries about what will happen next. I am calm, and the stresses of life can never take their toll when I am in this transitory state of mind.

I have rarely felt stress of late anyway. Donna keeps me calm, and even when she is not around, I am happy to know that she is in my life.

Our talk of music has revitalised my passion for that particular art. As I lie in calm bliss, here on my shadowy floor in the early hours of the morning, I know I will not be able to sleep until I have rejoiced in listening to the music I have loved for many years.

I think about the night, and what it means to me. I look to the mystical stars and listen to everything I can which tries to capture that beauty in lyrics.

The words swirl around in my head, concocting a new song out of fragments: the night begins to turn your head around/ treat me like you did the night before/ it's been a hard day's night/ this night is mine, oh mine/ night and day, you are the one, only you beneath the moon/ now I need you more than ever/ I never stole a happy hour around here/ this night has opened my eyes.

I climbed into bed and fell into a deep slumber.

It is another workaday workday. I return to my humdrum labours after a mesmerising evening which transformed my life irreversibly.

I reach the desk at the front of the clinic. I'm told my client Johnny is waiting for me. How can anything, let alone a mentally ill man, compare to last night and come out as anything other than awful?

I enter the room. 'How are you, Johnny?'

'Not well. I want to die still.'

Her hair. Her beautiful hair. The way it curls in the wind and shines in the sun. It contorts the world around to fit her radiance. 'Why is that?'

'I don't know.' Johnny starts sobbing. 'I used to be happy. And then it all went dark. It was like an empty room left alone with a broken lightbulb. And I tried to use what I could to make it better. I built myself a torch to provide my own happiness, but eventually found that the world is too powerful to control.'

'I see. And how do you think you could alter this?'

'I can't. I know that now.'

'Maybe you're just leading yourself to believe there is no way to help yourself.'

'I don't think you're a very good psychiatrist.'

Donna. The beautiful Donna. She means the world to me.

'Do you crave anything?' asks Johnny.

The sound of her voice means more to me than a lifetime of simplicity or action. 'No.'

'Because it's a Buddhist teaching that all suffering derives from craving. It's one of the Four Noble Truths.'

'Is that what you think is causing you distress?'

Johnny sits up. 'Well, it's this girl, you see.'

'Is it?' I sit bolt upright also.

'Yes. And she's the most beautiful woman in the world. But she won't so much as speak to me.'

'Uh-huh.'

'I don't know what to do.'

'I'm in love.' This is what I say. 'I know exactly what you're feeling.'

'I would hope you did. You're meant to be a psychiatrist.'

'I know exactly how you feel.'

Johnny looks at me in confusion. I look at him in intrigue.

'What's she like?'

'She's me. She's the piece that fits into me. It's like, with her, the connection between us fails to materialise. I can't work out where one of us stops and the other begins. But I know there are two of us. This isn't loneliness. I know there are two of us. I bore myself, but when there are two of us together, even the plainest topic is a revelation of excitations.'

We sit and talk for hours. Every detail of his lost love is described to me in perfect exquisity. And then I talk about Donna. My lovely Donna – I have no choice but to talk about her, really. She means the world to me and she is my world. I can't quite recount how amazing she is; that can only be understood through the experience I had with her, and no other method comes close.

And at the end of the discussion, the only thing I can suggest is that he tell her how he feels, for better or for worse. It is important that they both know how they feel, or else a beautiful opportunity may be wasted. Well, I am no great poet, but I care.

6th

I need Donna. Without her pulsing through every region of my life, I am just a semi-physical voice. I am a meaningless being rambling to myself, with no-one there to listen, to make sense of myself, to make me me. And when I'm with her it is the noblest of ecstasies. Every waking moment, I long to be beside her.

I'd heard it said before that love is perfect, that it is the culmination – the jouissance – of life, a person's existence's very purpose and resolution. I was a cynic. I thought I was beautifully and elegantly so. Forever alone. And now I feel it. That beautiful expression of all that is logical in the world. The perfect fix of bodies and minds.

I remember a conversation we'd had yesterday, which in the haste to mention all the beauty of her mind and her way with words I'd neglected to mention; the discussion also involved Donna's passion for passionate speech and her persistent plea for poetry, but the topic was addressed from a new angle; the discussion was about language itself; not merely using language, but addressing language as we used it.

'What's your favourite word?' she asked.

'I don't know,' I answered after a thoughtful pause. 'I don't think I could put my finger upon one word to use more than any others.'

'No, no, I don't want to know which word you use most,' she explained. 'Anybody might be made to use some words more than others. A school teacher might be compelled to endlessly repeat syllabus when all she really longs to say is dénouement.'

I love that she knows the word dénouement and that she says it with such great pleasure, rolling it around her vocal chords several times in order to pick up all the Francophone and Francophile intricacies before it leaves her lips.

'Surely there are plenty of reasons to say dénouement as a teacher? Particularly if the woman in question teaches an English Literature class in this scenario.'

She shook her head – almost in mourning at the loss of literary love – as I was saying that. 'English Literature classes are never focussed upon dénouements. Even when there is just cause to discuss plot, dénouments are so frequently dismissed.'

'You're right.'

'It ought to be outlawed in the classroom,' she joked. 'If they have rules against swearing and ill behaviour, there should be rules against the destructive power of the syllabus.'

I laughed loudly, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd enjoyed just the simple pleasure of friendly speech this much. 'Well, my favourite word is neither syllabus nor dénouement.'

'I'm pleased to hear it's not syllabus. Such a restricting word. But I've always been a fan of dénouement.'

'Don't get me wrong,' I told her with an enthusiastic grin on my face, 'I've nothing against dénouement. It's just not my favourite, that's all.'

'Then what is your favourite?' she pleaded.

'I suppose,' I supposed, and still I suppose, 'that if we're going down the path of narrative elements, I'm partial to the beauty of the term catalyst.'

'Ooh, I haven't heard catalyst in a while.'

'It's a wonderful driving force – both the word and its meaning.'

'I'm glad you brought it up. I can go home happy because I heard catalyst.'

'I'll go home happy because I saw you.'

'Well, of course, that too.' She kissed me softly on the cheek. 'But I'm glad you said catalyst today.'

'Actually,' I began, revising my mind, 'there's a problem with catalysts.'

'What?'

'Not every story has one. In fact, some of the best stories have no real catalyst.'

'I guess I see what you mean. Sometimes the desperate rush for a catalyst can ruin an otherwise great story.'

'Anyway,' I said. 'You never told me your favourite word.'

'I said I liked dénouement.'

'Ah, yes, but you never said that was yours.

'The word dénouement is so beautiful it appeals to many people.'

'Like those singles you hate so much?' I smirked.

'All right, I haven't actually thought of a favourite word. I just wanted to know yours.'

'Then why don't you think of one?'

She thought. 'Niche.'

My entire body tingled with the honest grandeur of such a concise word. 'I really like niche.'

'It's so fitting.'

'So modest.'

'So underused.'

'It needs to be used more,' she told me, as though it were an ancient secret she'd been hiding from humanity but had to utter to me.

'Yes. Absolutely. But at the same time we can't let just anybody use it.'

'I know. It's the prized possession which must be used cautiously by all those who have earned it through ingenuity.'

'The caviar all the common man.'

'Words are everybody's.'

'Everybody's and nobody's.'

'We must let the words fall into the right hands.'

'Niche must become its own niche.'

We giggled in cycles at the shared worlds we'd created together.

Later, I told her, 'We both like niche, but I particularly like kitsch.'

She gasped. 'How can I have forgotten kitsch?'

'It was just too kitsch for you. Only a select niche group can remember to use the word kitsch.'

She playfully pushed me on the shoulder. 'Kitsch is the perfect word. It's the justified search for the intimate and intricate.'

'It explains itself. There's no need for justification. Something which is kitsch is simply kitsch. No more, no less.'

She grabbed me by the lapels and kissed me. It was only yesterday, but I have already forgotten if we were in the middle of a crowded street or alone in a field of daffodils. My eyes closed instantly when our mouths met, and we entered our own world.

I know it's a cliche, and it pains me sometimes to feel the generic lovey-doveity. To feel the same way as everyone else can be such a bore. But I know I'm different. The ecstasy of loving Donna is all I ever need. It is wonderful and wild and I know that if anyone else in the world ever felt this way, there would be no wars or separation, only love, only infinite cuddles and lifetimes spent gazing in each other's eyes. I know this, but it's not true. So many feel love— proper love, the sense of meaning that comes with finding your other self. Everyone is different in exactly the same way. In days gone by, that would bother me. I might have gotten mildly angry at the paradox, but here I am in the midst of love, a love that lasts forever, and hoping beyond hope that everyone can feel this way. I'm longing for a paradox and I no longer care; all I want is for everyone to feel different in exactly this wonderful way.

I dream to be with Donna when I'm old.

7th

"Last night, with many cares & toils oppress'd

Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest—"

I once read that this is the earliest recorded poem by Edgar Allen Poe, who was noted for being excellent at completed works of writing. For some reason it had compelled me recently, and I had looked it up on the internet to further my understanding of it. As is the way with the beginnings of a future educational technology, I got no help there. All that was present was people reminding me of the same piece of information: this was his first attempt at an art. Several people had uploaded pictures of this phrase headlined across the faces of staged photographs, but when something is thrown at an unwitting facade, that's when the least understanding takes place.

'Last night' was wonderful with Donna. Well, my last night, when I went on a date. The real last night was sitting at home and longing, aching to be with Donna, but still that was far better than anything else I have experienced. Last night always makes me think of the wonderful time I have spent with Donna. I look back at the fragment.

'Last night, with many cares & toils oppress'd

Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest—'

My eyes lingered on the ampersand. For some reason I felt lost. The twisting symbol made me ill to look at. To me it was an abuse of something beautiful. 'And' is a wonderful word. It is an organic union expressed in the universal and omnipotent characters of the Latin alphabet. The ampersand – especially here in a poem – is a shorthand dismissal. It is a way of saying, 'We acknowledge the premise of unification, so – in understanding of this fact – we are going to ignore the actual combination itself and skip straight to the obvious and primal.' Fish and chips; love and marriage; Donna and Steve. Donna & Steve isn't the same thing; it is the commonplace shortcut for those who do not care.

Oppression. To care is to show compassion, even love. The notion that this should be so lazily bound to any other concept, nor that it be seen oppressed, did not to me bear thinking about.

I can no longer see the word toils without seeing coitus. Both words strike a fear to my very soul. The odd scientificity of the latter makes me think coitus is a thing of chemistry and not romance.

And the odd em-dash which fails to end the piece made me more fearful than anything. I had no idea what was to come next. I am left hanging on a piece of punctuation, never knowing where the poets will lead me forth. Last night, with many cares & toils oppress'd/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest—

'What does it mean?' I ask. I should probably tell you I have Johnny with me again. A good child, but – or perhaps so – suffering. He spreads himself out on the mid-19th century – or mid-19th century style, though it hardly matters – lounger I have in my office, or perhaps laboratory.

'What?' asks Johnny. 'Last night, with many cares & toils oppress'd? I imagine it's something about sex. Everything is. As a psychologist, you must know this.'

'Yes, unbearably so. I'm too aware of the impact sex has on people.' I sit back in my chair. 'Don't have sex, Johnny.'

'Wh– What makes you say that?'

'I've seen all the problems sex causes and none it solves. Tensions run high, people become possessions, sex just generally doesn't suit generality. If you're really committed, if you really love someone... don't have sex with them. At least, wait a while. If you're not committed, sex is just a very silly way to make a lot of people upset.'

'Okay. Well, I'll bear that in mind.'

'Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest— What do you make of that?'

'I laid me on a couch to rest just now,' says Johnny, not looking up from his place on the chaise lounge.

'How are you feeling at the moment, anyway?'

'Pretty dreadful,' said Johnny. 'Well, there is one thing. The girl. My love. I need to be with her.'

'Have you told her how you feel?'

'Not yet.'

'You need to.'

'But I'm worried she'll say no.'

'She might do. But you're causing yourself more trauma that you don't need by postponing this.'

'Maybe.'

'I feel as though this is blocking our development into other areas of discussion. If you can sort out whether or not she feels the same about you, we can continue from there.'

'I'm so scared she'll say no. It's a big risk to take.'

'If she does, we can discuss it here. But you can't live your life in fear. Everything we do is a risk. Any time we try to do anything, we take risks. Leaving the house is a risk. Staying at home is a risk. Relationships are a risk. But not pursuing it is the greatest risk of all.'

I don't wish to intrude, but then I dare.

8th

And he did. By golly, Johnny went up to her later that day, and told her how he felt. All was well; she reciprocated the feelings and the two lovers entwined.

When he had his appointment with me today, he told me in great detail of the magic moment he spoke beautiful words into her heart and soul. He told me about the moment they kissed and how it felt to be the sole receiver of this glorious exchange of human emotion.

As far as I can tell, they didn't take their budding relationship to any repulsive heights. He seems vibrant, so I can assume this is romance and not lust: art, not resigning to base impulse.

I don't know why I'm so repulsed by the idea of sex. I suppose, being a lonely man, I'd always seen humans as lonely creatures; as a result, the picture of people having sex was one of sleaze, not beauty.

My thinking was that no human was in love, so all humans were having sex were merely bodies leering into each other's dead and hopeless eyes. You should never expect too much of humanity: you'll just be disappointed. But is it too much to hope for art and beauty, rather than the fulfilment of base impulses?

Sex is all right for some. But why does it have to be something people do out of boredom? Why cannot people search for meaning and the rich pleasure of love – of people or art or nature or knowledge? Why instead does the primary pursuit of the human race appear to be some mindless, cheap and easy completion of sexual activity with those we neither love nor respect. It's heart-crushing.

My Donna is different. With us, sex never comes up as an issue. We never question whether or not our love needs to be taken to some new level. We are in love. We are together because it is an impossibility that from now on we could ever be apart. We don't have sex with the goal of reaching some higher level because we are in love and that's the highest level any relationship could ever hope to reach.

I am sat with Donna right now. We have reached a point where we are comfortable and happy being around each other as much as possible. She invited me over this after work was finished, and neither of us asked why; we simply knew that it was our unified deep desire to accompany our lovers endlessly.

She gazes idly out the window. Something is on her mind, and the corner of her mouth forms a Caesar's thumb waiting to tell me whether it's positive or not.

'Bored?' I ask.

Her decision is made; her lips turn upwards. 'Shall we feed the ducks?' She grins. 'I always love to feed the ducks.'

'Okay.'

We wander over to the market to pick up a loaf of bread, and Donna tells me about her favourite memories.

'When I was seven,' she says, 'my family drove down to France.' She turns to me for another of her footnotes. 'I knew France was nearby, but didn't understand how we could drive off an island.'

I love the way she does that. I love hearing her memories, but I also love the way she takes a break partway to mention her contemporary concerns.

'We drove down to Dover, of course, which took three-and-a-half hours. There was a queue to get onto the ferry, so my dad and I got out the car and looked across the English channel. He showed me how France is very close, but still requires a boat. Squinting through the mist, we could make out the squiggly coastline on the other side.'

'That's a really nice story.' I can't help smiling, and wonder if our faces will someday ache from constantly making each other smile.

'We stayed somewhere out the way of Each day we'd buy a gallette – a crusty, round loaf of buckwheat. The intention was to make sandwiches, but we'd always tear the pieces and eat it before we could make anything from it.'

We arrive at the market and search through every stall to find the local breadmakers. There are many, Staffordshire being accustomed to producing nice bread to eat, and sturdy dishes to eat it from.

'Wouldn't it be nice to find one of those loaves?' I ask, pleased to spend any amount of time searching for a product which might bring a smile to Donna's face. 'A gallette.'

She agrees excitedly, looking with absolute adoration into my eyes, and knowing that for the first time she has found somebody with the precise love of the specificities of life willing to go to any lengths to attain perfection.

Some of the stalls have bread made freshly that morning in Fichleke; some are stands imported food from the continent. It takes us almost an hour of searching, but eventually we find the perfect loaf; a clear fan of fine culinary foreign-cooked food presents us with a gallette, although it takes some time to retrieve it from the colossal array of tables upon which some of the finest art ever to be produced for consumption sits waiting approval from the local palates.

'It must have been difficult to get this specific loaf here,' Donna says.

'Yep,' says the breadmaker. 'That's why it costs so much.'

We get a loaf and wander over to the red bridge which curves above Fichleke Canal.

'Why does it matter what type of bread we get if we're just going to feed it to the ducks?' Then, concerned she may view my question as ignorance, I amend my question: 'I'm not complaining; I'm just curious of why it means so much to fulfil such an ordinary action in such a beautiful way.'

Donna smiles again, and I notice the kindly crinkles next to her eyes whenever she's happy. 'Why have anything that's not perfect?'

We kiss softly again.

The daffodils are out, and Donna says they're her favourite flower. I pick one and hand it to her. She puts it behind her ear like a pen saved for later art. I wonder what she intends to do with it: will she find a way to dry it out and whittle down the flower to be used like a quill in a few months time? Maybe she'll put it in a glass of water when she gets home, and watch it cope for another few weeks. Maybe she doesn't worry about the future like I do. The daffodil sits resting behind her ear, and I'm happy it does.

I love my Donna and my love is bold.

9th

It's often said that literature provides the mirror to see ourselves. Well, I think that to myself, at least. Literature provides the mirror with which to see ourselves. When we read novels and poetry, we reflect on ourselves. We learn from literature. We learn from all the arts. Reading opens the mind to new ideas: the feeling, the emotion of life. Literature opens life's vaults. But also we know concepts. A message is key to the novel form. A worry is the cause of a play. A thought is central to poetry.

We may read because we want to feel and to know, but we may also read as a consequence of thought and emotion. When our lives have reached their apex – the absolute climax of beauty and art, during which our hearts vault over our minds – only art can talk as we think. No other person can talk a lover speaks art. But what of the other lover? – the lovee, the loved, though both are bound in beauty – you ask. Surely both lovers speak beauty. Yes. But two lovers cannot be said to be in conversation; only to be painting the most beautiful images the mind can never see and the forms of art to dream upon.

I have my Donna, my prima volta donna, to inspire the arts. My one muse turns every book I read, every film I watch and every painting I muse upon the muses of into pure, fluid ecstasy. She is no longer a distant imagining. She is real, the living thing. I have what I want. But I have no intentions of possession. I wish for the transcendence of two united minds. We can no longer exist as separate entities. I have nothing to be as a single. I want to be with Donna. I want to be with her for all time. She needs to know just how much I love her, but I don't know how to express fully the eternity of my thoughts. She inspires feelings within me which are only present in literature and love.

The same feelings arise from writing. I have started to do write, for I have started to love. I cannot help my pen, but to draw images beyond vision. I want only one thing which exists outside Donna; I wish to write a poem to show just how I feel about Donna, to add a single work of literature to the world of art. I'm afraid of the rushing river of main-stream art as it stands. I would rather, if my expression fits in art at all, sit still in the pool by the side of the river. Even if my life only takes place in the world as part of a puddle, I need to show how I feel, before I'm resigned to a vault of my own.

But the poem is not for everyone. I want to write a piece for her, so my lovely Donna – my prima volta donna – can see exactly how I feel about her. Art is personal. My art is always and shall forever be for heart. But my art is so subtle, timid and loud, that I can only ever put my love for Donna into words by writing it down as a beautiful poem and requiring everyone on Earth to read how I feel.

I start with the best: Shakespeare – the greatest artist in our very English of minds. There are others. In the world of art, the greatest artists are on display in the national museums, and the perfect, most expressive, beautiful lives are preserves in the vaults. Only Shakespeare is everywhere. His universality extends beyond mere art, beyond mere Earth, beyond human attainment, and reaches a hand up to and only just touches the most universal and beyond-the-universe idea: emotion— beauty— love!

That is what Donna is to me. I only wish I could put it into the realm of words. Every time I cart out onto the medieval pastoral plain of poetry (such an old, yet still widely admired realm of expression), my horse volts back the other way and I am again far from being an artist. I read the words of Shakespeare and look for inspiration:

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on th'other.

—Macbeth, I, vii, 25-28

I am hopeless to attain such expression – such beauty – such life – but, as I say, my heart vaults every time I think of her— which is all the time. I repeat myself: clearly I can never be the artist I wish to pretend in my everyday, now-romantic façade. But then I do not truly wish to be an artist. I could never make it as a James Joyce, and Shakespeare is a body only present on the horizon.

I want more than anything else for Donna to know how I feel; for her to know that every time she looks my way, I take a thousand volts to the heart. I have told her, but I don't think she's fully heard. I need to sound my bugle as a tuba.

Her life to me is a work of art. Her being is the finest beauty, the lucid dream of reality, eliciting Utopia and drawing the Old Masters' paintings from the vault.

Prima volta donna – first time woman. Volta donna – once lady. Donna volta – female again. Prima donna volta – the first lady of time. Donna prima volta – the woman of historical firsts. Volta prima – first time. Prima donna – principal female. All these are my Donna.

I feel nervous at the thought of her. The vault of love holds unknown power over me. But love holds no gates open for my fears.

10th

I have to tell Donna. I have achieved my poem – the best I can come up with, anyway. I take her by the hand and tell her I love her. We are in her flat, sat on the sofa.

'I love you,' I say.

She smiles. The most beautiful smile. 'I love you too.' I've seen her smile and I've really seen her when she laughs.

I have to tell her. 'I wrote you a poem. I hope it can begin to express how much you mean to me and how much I care.'

I stand up to tell her my feelings. She remains sat on the settee. I open my mind and mouth to unleash my poor, passionate attempt at beautiful expression:

I love her though it's just a bar meeting.

Her name was Donna and this was our date.

I don't sleep much tonight. I fear my love is fleeting.

"I love you." And such words were our fate.

Well, I am no great poet, but I care.

I dream to be with Donna when I'm old.

I don't wish to intrude, but then I dare.

I love my Donna and my love is bold.

I look up from the trembling paper in my hand, and see Donna's eyes are near-watering. I have never seen anybody so moved by anything I've written. 'Thank you,' she says.

'I love you, Donna.' She smiles – a beautiful smile – I love her – I love her – I love her – 'I love you.'

She sits up, holds me by the tie and says, 'I love you,' back and kisses me tenderly.

I take my seat again, settling into my position beside her on the seat. Our soft and eager lips are now inseparable. We are connected, entwined, in body and soul. I think of the future and of the past and can never imagine a time which is not identical to the present.

She takes her mouth away from mine for a moment to gasp, 'I love you, I love you, I love you,' her eyes are the sweetness of my life. 'That's all I need to say.'

How I ever lived before I knew Donna is beyond me. I want to stop exclaiming my love for her, for fear she may get sick and tired of hearing it, but no part of me allows my mouth to stop expressing how I feel: neither through kissing nor through words can I stem the flow of expression bursting from me – 'You mean everything to me.'

I can't think of the next lines to the poem. I need completion. Donna gives me completion. With her, everything is finalised into exact beauty. I don't know how long I can take being in love this intensely without exploding with pure and perfect ecstasy.

I kiss her passionately, on top of what I am already doing, biting into her warm being and pushing my love towards her soft and calm presence. My loving embrace squeezes her tightly as she sinks her fingers into the delicate plane of my back. I know nothing else to say but that I love her. I love her, I love her, I love her. I am her lover, her beau and her paramour. She is my equal, my other and my everything.

'I know I need hardly say,' I say, 'how much I love your casual way.'

'Your words are beautiful,' she utters. 'Please don't put your tongue away.'

And, just there, I see before me the finality I have searched for. The ending lines to my poem. They don't rhyme, because endings never do. The apex is my current state of being. The climax to the love poem of my dreams is my being here, right now, right in this most excellent of positions in the universe with my Donna – my prima volta donna.

I realise the final lines of my poem. A ten-line poem about my love. The perfect, finite depiction of our love. The poem, viewed like this, tells the complete story of falling in love. And I now have a conclusion:

But love holds no gates open for my fears,

Nor any room for error but mine own.

11th

All I have is a picture of her. The first picture of her. I am not by her side right now, and that to me is the worst imaginable circumstance.

I know I am ridiculous. I am holding such high expectations that I am forcing myself into horrendous sadness. I want her by my side at all moments. There must be times when she's not there, and I feel sad when she isn't. There is a voice in my head shouting, 'Get over yourself.'

It says, 'She cannot be by your side at every moment.' This voice in my head instructs me that I need to grow up and stop being sad at her lack of presence. I begin to agree— But why?

She loves me. She said so herself. Every time we meet – 'I love you.' I love you. If she loves me – which she evidently does – why must I get over the notion of us being together always. Finally my life is perfect. Finally I am at a point where my dreams really can come true.

Why can't I be sad when she's not around? It's not something I need to get over, because it's not something that will be frequently happening. I am happy. I am happy. It takes a moment to sink in. I'm in love. I am in love!

I want to treasure this picture. I paint myself a vulgar picture of reality when in my hands I hold the picture of beauty.

A tear falls from my eye. I love you, Donna. I need you all the time. I've got to get you into my life. And now you are. I have you, and you have me, and we can be together always.

I feel getting my hopes up is too much. But why? We are in love. We are together— or will be later. We are a couple. We are in love. I love you, Donna.

I don't want to be alone on another stifled Friday night. I cry. I am crying. The aching pain in my gut erupts into fierce internal tears of horror as I gulp out the misery of being away from my Donna. Her absence – if only for one day; if she only has something else to do – is the worst imaginable feeling. These were the first decades of my life. I shall not let their solitude invade again upon my rich loving.

All I have to do is look again at this photo I hold in my hands to feel in love; to be in love; to love: all I must do is glance upon the beautiful face and feel and remember the beautiful, wonderful, expressive, artistic and artful mind of my one, my only, my love, my prima volta donna, my Donna. The presence of my Donna dams my tears.

12th

Last night I felt all alone, indistinct in this world. This night I feel real arms around me.

'Are you all right, my dear,' she asks. My dear – I am her dear.

'Yes.' I start laughing, and I can't stop myself.

'I love you!' she cries majestically. I hope they can hear heard words across the world. 'I love it when you laugh out of sheer pleasure.'

'I only laugh like this when I'm with you.'

'I only love when I'm with you,' she says.

'I've never felt unrestrained pleasure except when you're around.'

'I've never felt

We grab each other's hands and we run; no thought, just running; just pure, blissful running. We run up and down every street in Fichleke. The skies open up, and little specks of water begin to flick the paving slabs with dusty spots of darker concrete.

'What's your favourite kind of rain?' she says with an ecstatic smile.

'I like it when it's warm and makes the streets smell of springtime.'

'I like how that smell is unique; it never occurs anywhere except on these British streets on warm days on these ancient paths.'

'I like breathing in the scent of happiness, and knowing it will be stored in my mind until the day I die.'

'I like running through the light rain and getting my body covered in warm, fragrant raindrops.'

'I like rejoicing at the smell of warm rain following me into my house at the end of a good day.'

We both breathe in deeply in tandem, and our eyes widen at the realisation that some miracle has provided us with the perfect-smelling rain on this mild day in the English Midlands.

'Let's run,' she suggests, and I have no intention of stopping her. We run back through the streets until we see the drizzled shop fronts disappearing behind us.

'What's your favourite poem?' she cries as we run with all our might.

Through the water and wild wind pushing against our faces, I shout out the words which Yeats had written so many decades earlier.

'When you are old and grey and full of sleep,/ And nodding by the fire, take down this book,/ And slowly read, and dream of the soft look/ Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.'

'That's beautiful,' she shouts back. 'Yeats, isn't it?'

'Yes. There's more. That's just the first stanza.'

'The first stanza is my favourite.'

When we are done with the town, we carry on running until we are out of the urban area. We run past the houses and we run past the bungalows. We run until we are running on fresh grass. We run as the leaves turn upwards the capture all the moisture of the environment.

We finally lie down in the fading rain, our backs absorbing the droplets left on the field.

'I love you,' I weep softly. I am pathetic.

'I know; I love you too.'

'I'm pathetic.'

'No, you're not.' She crinkles her brow delicately. Her face is sad at looking upon such a one as myself.

'A man should be macho: that's what they always lie. I'm not man enough for you. Man and woman. That's what they always say it should be.'

'You don't have to be anything but yourself.' She kisses me, embraces me. Again, the same old clichés. But I want nothing else. I cannot rank my experience on a list of total experiences, because this is the one exclusively mine. Donna and I are joined, conjoined, united in love; others may love, but they cannot have our love.

'I love you, Donna.'

'I love you too.'

'I really love you. I cannot be without you.'

We hold each other for another hour without letting go. A full sixty minutes. A countdown counting up. Up, up, and beyond. What our clock counts to is irrelevant; we are immortal – eternal lovers in eternal love.

She smells of utopia and cuddles like ecstasy. Donna is perfect. I don't know if you know. I have said enough, but do you know. I can never express enough. We are in love. In love. In love. In love. In love forever. Donna is my other and we have things great together. I have given you samples of speech to help the image emerge, but words are useless to express the feeling of looking into her eyes and seeing an eternity of bliss, and seeing her infinite beauty staring back at me.

'I love you.' Donna is my everything. 'I love you.' Donna is my home. 'I love you.' And never shall I ever feel alone.

13th

'What's the story of your life?' I ask.

'Sixteen, clumsy and shy,' she responds. 'That whole routine.'

'That's beautiful.'

'What's your story? You do have a story, don't you? You seem like the kind who might.'

I have my arm around her as we wander down streets upon streets of cool night-time, the blaring streetlamps casting a warm, loving glow upon our being-in-the-world-in-two-bodies. We have no aim in particular. It is just nice to get out and express our love before the world.

What is my story? she asked. 'The quest for passion.'

'That's not a good enough answer.'

'I let you get away with "Sixteen, clumsy and shy",' I giggle.

'You said that was beautiful.' I've never in all my years heard such a beautiful, passionate accusation.

'It is beautiful. So is "The quest for passion".'

'No...' she says in mock-dismissiveness (a word which can only be conjured by our love), smirking all the while. 'I need a proper answer. What is your life about?'

'It's about living. It's about you.' At this, she turns and kisses me.

'I really love you,' she says.

'I know.'

'No, I mean it,' my lovely Donna says. 'You are everything to me. I don't mean to sound clichéd, but I can't hold it in any longer; I need you to know how much I love you – eternity won't be long enough to express the way you make me feel.'

I stand close to her, my hands on her sides, and her hands on my hips, fingers brushing against my bottom.

'I've decided,' I announce, 'that my poem is incomplete.'

'Oh?'

'It needs another verse. Well, maybe not an extra stanza. But more lines. Perfection, however long that takes.'

'You're sweet.'

'I need something that can go some way to saying how I feel about you, but I know that can never be fully expressed in mere words. It needs to be the most perfect love poem. I won't accept anything less for you, because you deserve nothing but the best. It may end up being a sonnet. It doesn't have to be, though.'

'Do you have the poem with you?'

'Yes.' I pull a piece of thrice-folded paper out my pocket. I unravel and begin to read.

I love her though it's just a bar meeting.

Her name was Donna and this was our date.

I don't sleep much tonight. I fear my love is fleeting.

"I love you." And such words were our fate.

Well, I am no great poet, but I care.

I dream to be with Donna when I'm old.

I don't wish to intrude, but then I dare.

I love my Donna and my love is bold.

But love holds no gates open for my fears,

Nor any room for error but mine own.

The presence of my Donna dams my tears.

And never shall I ever feel alone.

'It's not complete,' I reaffirm.

'I think it's lovely.'

'Thank you. But I'll add more as time goes by.'

'Do you need to add anything? Isn't everything already perfect?'

I stop to think for a moment. 'Yes. When I'm with you, everything is perfect. But that doesn't mean we can't add more to perfection.'

She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me on the lips. She is soft and gentle yet the most powerful force I have ever known.

From anyone else, it would be a choke. But from her it is pure, fluid passion. The trust we hold is all I need. Again, my sweet and tender emotions bubble up inside me and burst out. 'I love you.' I can't help but utter these words as soon as I rejoice in my great fate.

14th

Love is in the air. A cliché it may seem, but I cannot help but feel everything is coming up roses. I spend my days wandering the city streets, viewing the general mood of positivity which pervades life. Such an experience has never before been felt.

Peace, love and harmony; very nice – and in our world! Oh, I need to stifle it. I need to hold back on my expression, as is the very British thing to do. I can't say I'm happy for fear it may upset the sad. But who here is sad? Who even cares for misery? I raise my head to the clouds, grinning at whatever within or without the universe caused my life to become as it now is. I fill my lungs with the good, fresh oxygen, and—

'I love you, Donna!'

There are now tears in my eyes. All is well.

Now I meet with her in the gentle evening, when the pink rays of yawning light settle down and allow the stars their moment out the sun.

'I love you, Donna. I really love you.'

We kiss again. Her lips have a certain coolness which calms my mind into perfect bliss. People talk about kisses as being hot, but these are not the passionate bindings of lovers. True, loving kisses are soft, emotive and low in temperature, though not without romantic warmth.

We go to a restaurant. We take two seats by the window, which look out over the nicer part of Fichleke, which for me is now all of it. Everywhere I go is a centre for perfection, since Donna is always in my heart and mind.

Everything I see reminds me of Donna. Out the window, I see scaffolding being put up by all the workers of the town: the beginnings of our relationship supported by all those around us. There, too, is a building from a decade ago. And towers from twenty years ago. And older and older and older. The more I look, the farther into the past I see, and I soon come to the realisation that I am viewing eternity. Every bit of it makes me think of Donna. Every feature of our surroundings is reminiscent of the bright beauty that is Donna.

I look back to where she is sat, across from me at the table. And the greatest reminder of love and Donna presents itself: my love, Donna herself.

'I really love you. I wish there was another way I could say it, but I'm hopelessly under your spell. I love you.'

She begins to tear up as well. Her tears aren't those of any normal person, no no no. When she wells up with love, bright star-filled gems dance gently across her cheeks. 'I love you too, Steve.'

We enjoy a pleasant meal together. Pleasant, because it was the most perfect experience of my life, but the food, the room, the world around fully paled in comparison to the hitherto unimaginable buzz in every part of my body – an ecstatic tingling rippling across my skin – and truly I knew that life couldn't get better than this.

We head outside after paying for the dinner and begin to softly kiss. Then, as the rush simmers, Donna turns away slightly and for the first time since I met her, she looks minorly sad.

'What's wrong my love?' I ask.

'I just don't know where this is going.'

'What do you mean? We can go wherever you want. We can get married, we can travel the world, we can live on a beach and write novels together, or we can hide away in a small flat overlooking Paris. We can kiss now and never let it end and watch the world learn to cope and grow and develop and survive and live and perish around us all as we stand locked in a delicate embrace. We can do whatever you want, Donna.'

Donna takes my hand and we begin to walk, or run, half skipping our way back towards her house, in a tender dance with the universe. The stars are out and up and looking down on us and twinkling, smiling gently in approval. The world is spinning and slowly it takes time out to be romantic and the laws of physics give the spare time to us so Donna and I can be together now forever.

'Where is this going?' she asks again.

'It's going wherever we want it to go.'

We pass streets upon streets upon streets as we run through the town I once knew as home and now know as anytime or anywhere because Donna is my everything. We make it, finally, to her doorway and kiss and embrace once again.

'Where is this going?' she asks for the final time.

'Where would you like it to go?'

'I'd like us to do more together,' she says.

'What does that mean? Do you want to spend more time together? If you'd like, we can spend the rest of our lives together.'

'I mean more stuff together.'

My face goes slightly red and I become uncomfortably uncertain about what she means. 'What is stuff?' Before she can answer, I say, 'I'm not sure I want to do stuff.'

'Come on,' she says, reaching a hand down and rubbing my upper thigh.

'Donna, I don't think I want want to do what you're thinking.' For the first time we are distanced. 'Maybe we're not on the same wavelength at the moment.'

'Come on. We're perfect for each other. We should take this relationship to the next level.'

'But I thought you said everything was perfect as it was?'

'I thought you said we could always add to perfection.'

'But I didn't mean it like this.'

'Neither did I.'

We lean back, kissing against the door, but I'm not sure I feel like kissing any more. Donna fumbles around in her pocket for her key, before opening the door. Then she squeezes my behind against my will.

She grabs my hand and we run upstairs. In her bedroom I kiss her delicately and say, 'I don't feel like doing anything more. I just want to be here.'

'I love you,' she says. But that changes and she starts unbuckling my trousers.

'Donna!'

'Steve!' she says passionately.

She fully removes my trousers. 'Donna, all I want is to kiss you. And not even necessarily that. I just want to be with you.'

'I want to be with you, too,' she says softly, gazing lovingly into my eyes. I don't want to deprive her of anything she wants, since she's so perfect.

We sit, partially unclothed and hug for a few moments more. I kiss her, then say, 'I wrote more of your poem.'

I jump up, find my trousers at the foot of the bed and retrieve the piece of paper from my pocket. I unfold it three times and read:

I love her though it's just a bar meeting.

Her name was Donna and this was our date.

I don't sleep much tonight. I fear my love is fleeting.

"I love you." And such words were our fate.

Well, I am no great poet, but I care.

I dream to be with Donna when I'm old.

I don't wish to intrude, but then I dare.

I love my Donna and my love is bold.

But love holds no gates open for my fears,

Nor any room for error but mine own.

The presence of my Donna dams my tears.

And never shall I ever feel alone.

As soon as I rejoice—

She bats the paper out my hand and it lands somewhere under the dresser. 'I don't want you to read poetry.' Then she pushes her face so close to mine that I can feel her hot soft breath at the back of my throat. 'I want you to make love to me.'

She pulls me over on top of her. I am uneasy. I am unwilling, I am the mannequin man with no thoughts and emotions of my own.

Donna the lover, a fortnight with me, and now she wants to forget my cries of celibacy. I have made it clear time and time again that this is love and not lust.

'I love you,' I say.

'I love you too,' Donna says, and I can see in her eyes that she means it. 'So make love to me.'

A current of fear rushes up through my body; my bones tremble with love and despair; I can't tell if I'm excited or afraid; I love Donna and want to be with her always, but I'm not sure if I'm prepared to be intimate with her physically; but I have no ordinary fear of intimacy; I want to be intimate with her emotionally; I want to be intensely part of this romantic duo; our pairing is perfect, so why ruin it?

Donna pulls down my boxer shorts and then rolls over onto me, so she is perched firmly on my crotch. Then I see in her face, in her eyes, in her mind, the drop, the final plunge, she pushes herself down onto me, and I feel myself enter her.

By this point her force has fully overwhelmed me. I am powerless to protest. She has complete control over me. All the pleasure I felt for her so recently now vanishes. A romance turns to horror and I will myself nervously to escape.

This is a pain I could never have known Donna would bring. Why would she do this to me? She looks deep into my eyes and can see my fear. I look back, a desperate and certain plea for help. I am desperate to escape, but nothing I can say nor do will set me free.

She thrusts herself into an endless hellish rocking. I go to scream out, but what do I say? She steals sex from me. The word cannot be 'no'. I must enjoy this. If coitus ever struck a fear to my soul, it has now become the epitome of sin. How can I love her if I don't wish to make love to her? How can this be a romance if this is not casual sex?

As she rises and falls, I see the stages of my age and my youth fluttering away. All the emotional growth I have gone through for birth until now is deteriorating; I can see myself in the future as a perpetual infant; this is hell and I want to burn.

I enter the whirlpool; my mind degrades; I can no longer think as an adult; the only complexity of being is my emotional peril; I can no longer feel anything good, and the love I feel for Donna is souring into hatred of myself.

I was once handsome and tall, and my Donna was once a companion through the wearisome world; now she is the worrying tormentor who has crushed my to impossible altitudes; I am buried six feet under as I lie helplessly on my back.

The living are now dead; my positivity is now pain; my creativity uses all the power of my brain to create the manifestation of a waking nightmare.

No light shines on our sweaty faces, I sweating from fear, she sweating with exhaustion; I have no knowledge of time and I see clocks melting on frozen hearts. Frosty silence fills the room, and I want desperately to cry out for her to stop, but all I know is the torment of here and now. No words can be spoken. If my voice box has been removed, or even my throat slit, I shan't be surprised.

I look across at her sat on me. The love of my life has propelled me into this torment, and there is nothing I can say, nothing I can do but stick by it.

'Put more effort in,' she tells me. It's taking all my effort not to die.

I see her. The love of my life has cast me into the worst of all conceivable circumstances. All I want to do is be with her— not like this. My one is causing me this pain. All I feel is dread and I long for a time in which this dystopia could end. All I want to say is, 'I love you.'

I see her, her waxen body, as she takes off more and more layers, her belly, then her breasts, exposed, all those wonderful parts I'd long dreamt about, now the images of Hell on Earth.

How can I refuse? I love her so much. But I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this at all.

I can feel it.

That endless, hellish rocking.

I can feel it coming

I want more than anything else for Donna to know how I feel.

I can feel it coming in the air

In my mind, the connection between Donna and myself was pure, complete. Everything about our love was perfect. But now she is lunging herself upon me. She is forcing her body upon me, and I am not allowed the freedom to disagree.

Tonight

If only I had the courage, the energy, or the freedom of compassion. If only my voice and breath had not been stolen away by shock, I would scream out into the air. The only word and only thought which is currently in my mind is no. No, no, no, I only want to say no.

I can feel it

But I love her. Donna is my reflection, and I can't do anything to let down. This isn't what I want. I don't want sex. I want love. I don't want to make love, I want to be in love.

Coming in the air tonight

My mind returns to screaming; my brain floods with images of the endtimes; I drown in my own life force.

So long.

What is that sound high in the air tonight? The murmur of resistance — am I screaming? Is there hope for this ever to end? But I glare once more into Donna's greedy eyes, and see that nothing can stop her.

So long.

The internalised scream wails on forever and I am perpetually thrust back to childhood, robbed of the creative energies of my adult years; robbed, even, of the ability to cry out for this endless hellish rocking to be brought to termination.

So long.

I don't know if I'd rather this non-consensual act died this instant, or if I died instead. All I know is that this moment will haunt me for the rest of my days, whether the end comes tomorrow or with the endtimes.

I can feel it coming in the air tonight.

I see falling towers; I see the towns and cities I loved going up in flames; I see the vision of Donna and me, two minds in love, running through the warm winter rain; I see us walking patiently down the streets I used to walk along alone, holding hands and reminding each other that loneliness had become a thing of the past; I see the streets of Fichleke crumble into the underworld.

So long.

I see a bookshop shredding itself and all the torn pages of the classics rushing this way to choke me and to cut me. I see the art I loved turning into a weapon. I see all the paintings in the Louvre melting into a hot

So long.

I look into the eyes of the woman I trusted more than anything else in the universe; I trusted that we would be together forever more than I trusted the Earth not to fall from its heliocentric orbit, and shatter on the tiles of a vast and wearisome laboratory floor; I look into Donna's eyes and see she cares more about this moment than she does about my wellbeing.

So long.

I see a future version of myself refusing to leave the house and shunning the notion of trust altogether; I see the death of romance in the crushed concepts of love and lust in one poisonous feeling; I see myself opening Pandora's box in order to be with Donna, and finding out she wants to destroy me with all the sins within.

This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

And probably both.

Beat beat beat. Drums clamouring into my head. A crash of lust against love and the pain of existing as a stereotype. That endless hellish rocking. She has destroyed me. All the emotions I knew have been twisted and contorted into a painful parody of passion. Beat beat beat. A rhythmical torture and the desire to escape myself. If I could cut my mind out of my body and drift away from this world into anything better, I would. Even if my entire escape entailed ending the unbearable existence in which I now reigned, nor ruled as a hopeless servant, then I would do everything in my power to end consciousness, forever if necessary. Beat beat beat.

Donna. My prima volta donna.

In this decayed hole of a relationship, I used to see love and now I see only Donna's hatred. But, even in this ceaseless torture, I can see that she loves me. I want to believe that she never loved me, and she is doing this only out of spite

I have come to conclude that I am paralysed with fear; I want to cry out for her to stop, and I hope the water seeping from my eyes is the indication she needs to stop; but she will not stop for anything, and I see in her ghoulish smile

London Bridge is falling down, and I am falling with it. These memories of infancy haunt me at a time when I should be blissfully romantic with my lover. I sing the songs that remind me of the good times. Danny boy, the pipes are haunting. These songs all remind me of the worst of times. Little Miss Muffet sat on the tuffet, eating my life away.

I need no reminding; I am living the apocalypse.

My heart should have responded gaily, beating obediently, and the butterflies in my stomach fluttering in time with hers.

Why couldn't I have just been happy? Why couldn't I have chosen to want the same as Donna wants?

I feel like I am on a perilous boat, rocking me to oblivion. There is no positive way to describe how much I want to die in this infinite instant.

This is the end of civilisation; this is the endless moment of my life crumbling into uncertain pain; this is the moment I realise that I will never know happiness again.

This is the end of love with the blasphemy of its name.

This is the sound of one hand bleeding.

Beat beat beat. So long. This night has opened my eyes to something horrific. When will I see myself again?

I am trapped. I am trapped here, waiting for it to end; it being life or this night or the universe; I do not care; I only want everything to end.

I love her though it's just a bar meeting.

Her name was Donna and this was our date.

I don't sleep much tonight. I fear my love is fleeting.

"I love you." And such words were our fate.

Well, I am no great poet, but I care.

I dream to be with Donna when I'm old.

I don't wish to intrude, but then I dare.

I love my Donna and my love is bold.

But love holds no gates open for my fears,

Nor any room for error but mine own.

The presence of my Donna dams my tears.

And never shall I ever feel alone.

As soon as I rejoice in my great fate,

I see that I'm again behind the gate.

Dwelling

'I'm being raped,' he said. It had taken him several months to reach this point. There had been days when he stepped up to the police station and almost opened the door, before having a panic attack and running away.

'What?' asked the person behind the desk, curious at the terrified man's use of tense. By the looks of it, he was still living the memory of that painful night.

'I've been raped.' Steve found himself in a grey room with grey walls, grey tables and grey chairs. He stood at a grey desk talking to a grey receptionist with a gender.

'You're a rapist?' she asked.

'I've been raped.' This was the first time he had spoken the words to another life form. They had been stuck in his mind, buzzing around so he could no longer pay attention to anything other than his own torturous memories. He had been told to leave his own workplace after screaming at his patients. None of his colleagues knew why he was behaving so peculiarly, and none of them thought it polite to ask.

The receptionist rolled her eyes. 'Turn right, go through the blue double doors and take a seat in the waiting room.'

Steve went through the grey doors, entered the grey room and sat on a grey chair chair. He stared with glazed eyes at the blank magazines on the grey table before him.

That hellish, endless rocking. The twisting contortion of unwilling bodies.

He knew the date that it had happened. He knew the pain he experienced that night. Everything surrounding that was something of a blur. As time went by, he began to remember happiness. That was the most painful thing of all.

It had been a long time since it happened. He had never felt safe since that night. He spent many nights wide awake, wondering if he would ever feel safe again. Every now and then, a colourful thought burst through. It was a sort of gift: he was allowed, on occasion to reminisce upon the events of his life before that night. It was a twisted sort of gift: he longed so much for the past, the unobtainable past. He wished to be back in those days of innocence. Whenever a pleasant memory emerged, he ended up crying. He could never tell whether they were tears of joy or grief.

I see her, her waxen body, as she takes off more and more layers, her belly, then her breasts, exposed, all those wonderful parts I'd long dreamt about, now the images of Hell on Earth.

He missed the sunlight. He missed the days when the weather changed. He didn't mind whether it was rain or snow or sleet. These days it all came through as ash. He didn't care if it was cold or hot. At least it allowed him to feel something. Now, whenever somebody remarked upon the weather, he could not relate. They would tell him it was hot and sunny, and he could only see grey shadows and only feel his own dead skin. They would tell him it was cloudy with lighting, and it would be the same flat grey sky to Steve. As far he could recall, the sun had never shone since winter.

Steve was called through to a grey questioning room, a private, locked area where his only companions at the table were a grey police officer and a grey tape-recorder.

'Hello, Steven. I'm your SOLO.'

'My what?'

'Sexual Offence Liaison Officer. SOLO.'

'That's a rather solitary term to use, isn't it?'

The SOLO leant in close to Steven and said, 'Look, we deal with a lot of very serious cases here, so if you just want to have a laugh, I'll kindly ask you to leave.'

Steve was silent.

'What precisely happened to you?'

Last night, with many cares and toils oppressed, unwilling I was on a bed undressed.

'I was raped,' he said.

'You were involved in a rape,' the SOLO noted, writing it down in a small, grey notebook. 'How did this come about?'

'Well, I'm in a relationship with a lovely—' Steve stopped to re-evaluate. Donna wasn't lovely any more. Donna wasn't his. Donna and Steve was over. Perhaps Donna & Steve had arrived. 'My former girlfriend raped me.'

'She raped you?' the grey SOLO sneered, unconvinced.

'Yes.'

'So she forced herself upon you?'

'She made me have sex with her.'

'How? Surely you could overpower her.'

'Well, she made me do it,' explained Steve. That was all there was to it, but the more the SOLO interrogated him, the more he felt guilty about his own recount of the events. He told the truth, as honestly as was possible, and yet still felt guilty about the words coming out of his mouth, and the SOLO glared in disgust into Steve's eyes.

'If she forced herself upon you, you could push her away. She's just a woman.'

'She didn't actually hold me down.' His mind stuttered, and he noticed a hateful expression in the SOLO's eye. It was the look you would give to an untrustworthy employee who had told you that money had just mysteriously vanished from the till, and who genuinely expected you to believe it.

'She didn't actually hold you down?'

'No.' The SOLO's pen, which had been scribbling details of the assault, slowed to a halt. He looked up

The SOLO sighed. 'If nobody held you down, how were you raped?'

'My girlfriend pressured me into sex.'

'Pressured you into? Steven, this isn't primary school anymore. This is life, and you can't just fear bullies.'

'I was raped!'

'You were sexually abused.'

'I was sexually abused.'

'In what way?' asked the SOLO.

'My girlfriend made me have sex against my will.'

'And why is that?'

'I don't understand the question.'

'Why was it against your will?'

'I didn't want to have sex. And she made me.'

'Did she hold you down?'

'Well, no—'

'Did she threaten you with violence?'

'Not really.'

The SOLO raised an eyebrow and repeated, 'Not really?'

'Well, I suppose, not at all.'

After issuing a colossal eyeroll, the SOLO asked, 'Did she physically restrain you in any way?'

'No.'

The SOLO closed the notebook. 'Sexual abuse is a very serious issue. It's only under these circumstances that we've accepted your plea.'

'What circumstances?'

'Seeing as you say you were severely bullied.'

'I was abused.'

'You were bullied into sex. And honestly I find it difficult to take that seriously as a victim. Come back when you have a serious case to report.'

'I do have a serious case to report. I am a victim of rape.'

'Women are raped, Mr. You are male. You cannot be the victim of rape. You are at most the result of uncouth perverse instruction.'

'I was raped!' he screamed. 'What more do I have to do to prove it?'

'You are male.'

'What difference does it make? If someone is forced into having sex, surely that's an awful thing regardless of their gender?'

The SOLO sat back and looked deadly serious. 'Do you have any idea of the statistics of rape? 85,000 women are raped every year. Half of men aged between 18 and 25 don't think it counts as rape to continue having sex with someone who's changed their mind midway. So which are you?'

'What?'

'Are you a rapist or just a misogynist?'

'What? I'm neither. I'm a victim.'

'Look, everybody has a victim complex. Everybody likes to see themselves as the victim in an attack. The world can be a harsh mistress. Everyone seems to think they are victims of life. But the harsh mistress's grip does not mean it is okay to abuse women. Understood?'

'Look,' Steve said. 'I'm here because I was raped.'

'You say you've been raped. I assume this must have been anally penetrative.'

'No.'

'No? How was it, then?'

'Just the standard.' Steve gulped down another load of air to sustain him, but he didn't know why he wanted sustaining. 'Vaginal intercourse.'

The person looked at Steve in disbelief. 'Vaginal? Do you mean to say you're a transvestite? Or, rather, a reverse transvestite, since you're a woman pretending to be a man?'

'I'm not. I'm a man.'

'You're not a man.'

'I am.'

'Then how were you raped?'

'Like I just said, I was forced into having non-consensual vaginal intercourse by a female aggressor.'

'Oh. So you weren't raped, you were abused.'

'Whatever you want to call it.'

The SOLO scowled at Steve. 'I don't think is a laughing matter. Rape is a very serious accusation. You can go bandying the word about if what you actually mean is abuse or something less.'

The SOLO continued staring, presumably in the hope that Steve would say something different. Steve's pale face remained motionless for an uncountable period of time, and eventually he spoke up again for fear of having lost his voice.

'I was raped,' Steve said again.

'You were assaulted.'

'I was assaulted. And I wish to report the assault.'

'Okay,' the SOLO sighed. 'Detail what instruments she used to abuse you.'

'She didn't use any,' Steve explained.

'Just her hands?'

'Well, no.'

'So nothing, then?' The SOLO sighed.

'She used her body to abuse me.'

'To hurt you, you mean?'

'To hurt me. She hurt me with her body.'

'No, she didn't,' said the SOLO. 'You got laid. It happens to millions of people every day, and you were one of the lucky ones.'

'Lucky?'

'Don't get short with me, Steven.'

Steve sunk his face into his palms and allowed the sharp grey fluid of sorrow to drown his cheeks. 'I didn't want to have sex. She made me do it.'

'The fact that you had sex with someone and now you regret it is something for you to be ashamed of, and is no-one else's business.'

'Please, this isn't right. You can't let her get away with this.'

'What do you want me to do? Arrest everyone who ever had sex? You really want to go back to the Middle Ages, and that is disgusting. More disgusting than a little harmless bullying.'

Steve was by this point severely sobbing into the knees of his grey trousers. 'I don't want to have sex. I shouldn't have to have sex.'

'A mood of asexuality pervades your life. That's a bit weird, isn't it?'

'There is no such thing in life as normal,' Steve said.

'Well certainly not in your life. You're asexual. Or gay. They're both pretty similar.'

'It was my girlfriend who hurt me.'

'And we don't really have time for couples' quarrels here in the law.'

'I didn't want to have sex. She made me do it. That's bullying.'

'It's pestering at most. The fact that you inevitably gave in shows that you must have wanted it really.'

'I didn't,' Steve cried, shuddering.

'Then why did you?'

Steve had no answer for this.

'Why did you have sex if you didn't want to?'

'I don't know.'

'Why did you have sex if you didn't want to?'

'She made me do it.'

'Why did you have sex if you didn't want to?'

Steve tried to speak but he had no words to say. There could be no explanation for what happened. If there were at least a reason, then perhaps he could come to terms with what happened. And maybe there was. Maybe Donna had some reason for why she did it. He accepted that there was not any way for him to work out the causes of the event on his own. He said nothing.

'That's right.'

Steve had no idea how long he had been sat weeping pathetically and talking to the grey-faced SOLO in the grey room which let in no grey light to his grey life. It might have been days or weeks or eternities, but it was all Hell.

There were times when the SOLO left and might have been gone for days or maybe just hours. Several officers as they walked past peered through the mesh in the door and looked down at him. In time, his tormentor always returned.

'What happened after she upset you?'

'What do you mean?'

'Describe the events immediately following the "incident".'

That endless hell.

'I got up out of the bed, got dressed and said thank you—'

'You thanked her?'

The hellish rocking.

'I had no idea what else to say. Then I went home. I cried for a few hours, thought about cutting myself, then went to the police station. Well, it took me several months to come here. The pain and the crying might have taken up more time than I thought.'

I can feel it.

'You cried?' the SOLO asked incredulously.

'Yes.'

'Why did you do that?'

'I just did.'

'Do you not think about the consequences of your actions?'

'What are the consequences of crying?'

'Well it doesn't achieve anything, does it?'

'I was on my own. It didn't hurt anybody.'

'And do you really think that's a helpful way of dealing with the problem?'

'I came to report it here in the end, didn't I?'

So many questions with no answers. What answers could I ever hope to find?

'You took your time. Did you say the bullying event took place in February?'

'Yes.'

'Then why are you coming to report it only now?'

'Because, as I say, I was too afraid to report it at first.'

'So you stayed at home and cried?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'What do you mean why?'

'Why did you cry? What did you hope to gain from it?'

'Well, it's a natural reflex, isn't it? You cry to make yourself feel better.'

'And did it help?'

'A little...'

'If it helped, then why did you report it here? Why didn't you just remain at home and continue crying?'

'Because it doesn't help that much.'

'Then why did you bother crying in the first place?'

'I can't control my emotions.'

'If you can't control your emotions, why didn't you go to therapy instead of wasting police time? Why didn't you therapise yourself? What sort of a therapist are you that can't sort out your own problems?'

'I don't know. I need someone to talk to about what happened.'

'So why didn't you see another counsellor?'

'This is bigger than simple counselling. I need to go to the highest authority I can.'

'Could it be that what you are after is attention, not justice?'

Coming in the air.

'Are you calling me an attention-seeker?'

Tonight.

'There's no need to get defensive, Steven. Like you said, you're a psychologist.'

'I'm a therapist.'

I am the rapist.

'Or, rather,' Steve justified, 'I'm a counsellor.'

'Exactly. It is not true that many people have what one might describe as a "victim complex"?'

'It is true?'

'Then might it not be the case that you are one of these people?'

'Is that relevant?'

'I think every detail of the subject's mental health is vitally important. Is that a problem?'

'I just feel like I'm being victimised.'

'But you're claiming you are a victim.'

Do you remember?

'That doesn't mean to have to work against me.'

'Oh? Who here is against you? Point out someone in this room who is working against you.'

Do you remember— Don't worry.

'Shut up!'

'Sorry, Steven?'

'I'm sorry. That wasn't addressed to you.'

'Then who was it addressed to?'

'I'm sorry.'

The SOLO sighed again. 'I'm trying to understand what it was which caused you to not want to have sex.'

'Why? Why should I want to have sex?'

'Because sex is a basic human need. Aren't you a human?'

'It is a desire, not a need. I have removed myself from that desire. Is that a bad thing?'

'Don't you get cocky with me. I'm a police officer. I deal with sexual offence every day.'

'And I'm a psychiatrist. I know the harm that can be caused during sexual development.'

'But you're an adult. Why should sex harm you?'

'Life is a continual process of development.'

'You're past the age of consent,' the SOLO commented unhelpfully. 'That means you must have consented.'

'Please, I could go into so much more detail. It's not a simple case of dating somebody because I wanted sex. I didn't want sex. I wanted love. I had love. We were in love. I don't know why it had to end this way.'

'Go ahead. Sing your life.'

Steve tried his best to report back what had happened in the two weeks he had dated Donna. He thought he said everything he could. At the end of it all, the SOLO just stared at him blankly and left the room. When he returned, Steve was attempting to sleep on the floor, and the SOLO's expression had not changed.

'We have come to an agreement,' the SOLO said, after a lengthy debate with one of his peers.

The SOLO explained that the case would go to review, and that if Steve was lucky, and there was enough time, he might be able to take Donna to court over her actions.

Steve picked himself up, heavier than he'd ever weighed, and took himself out the room. As he left, he turned to the SOLO and said all he could say: 'Thank you.'

Courtship

'Your Honour and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am Mister Gallimard, here representing Steven. We accuse Donna of raping Steven on the night of February 14th. Having formed relationship in the preceding weeks, Donna used manipulation to force Steven into having intercourse with her against his wishes. The evidence I present will prove to you that the defendant is guilty as charged.'

'Thank you' said the judge. 'Now may we hear the defendant?'

'Your Honour and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am Mister Rideau, here representing Donna. As part of an acknowledged romantic and implied sexual relationship, Donna and Steven engaged in an ordinary act of lovemaking on the night of February 14th. Since neither party protested to this act, it cannot be said to be rape. The evidence I present will prove to you that the defendant is innocent.'

'Thank you,' said the judge. 'After these opening statements, the prosecution may call its first witness.'

There was little to be said in the way of witnesses. Since Donna and I were the only people present at the event, Mr Gallimard and Mr Rideau had nobody else to call to the stand as a witness.

I suggested to Mr Gallimard that we could call up other people present at the bars we frequented in order to question what they saw of the night.

He asked me why I thought that.

I told him I had been reading about other cases of rape, and that was what usually happened.

He pointed out that I had not been physically harmed, and that the night only turned 'sour' when we were already in the privacy of Donna's bedroom.

I told him it was just a suggestion.

He told me I should have made sure I had friends who could be called as witnesses. I remained silent after that.

'Steven is a gentle and loving man,' said Mr Gallimard, 'who wants nothing more than to make friends and find a faithful partner. It was with this mindset that Steven fell in love with Donna. Donna, a seemingly caring woman with similar interests and tastes to Steven. I see no reason why Steven should be forced to do anything against his will when dating. Is it not in his freedom to date a woman, then cancel engagements if they don't get along? And likewise should Donna not be allowed to break off the relationship if she discovered they didn't get along?

'But, of course, Donna and Steven did get along famously. Steven saw the caring woman who could brighten even his darkest days, and Donna saw a genius in the art of compassion.

'Then, when Steven revealed that he wasn't seeking sex – that he should have to reveal this says much about Donna's treatment of consent – she wouldn't take no for an answer. Donna refused to respect Steven's wishes, and when they reached the conclusion of their date, Donna forced Steven into having intercourse with her.

'As such, we wish for Donna to be prosecuted and sentenced to a spell in prison for breaking English law with regards to the Sexual Offences Act 2003.'

'Good morning, your honour. I am Mister Rideau. I am here to represent Donna. The accuser falsely believes Donna "raped" him on February 14th, something I think we can all agree never happened.

'Mister Gallimard references the Sexual Offences Act 2003. But, as anyone who is familiar with that law can verify, "rape" is specifically defined as such:

A person (A) commits an offence if—

(a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,

(b) B does not consent to the penetration, and

(c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.'

Gallimard flicked through his notes nervously and muttered an expletive upon discovering he had failed to take into account the major definition behind the court case.

'Now, since Gallimard claims the committer, the perpetrator, the attacker, the raper, the person A to be my client Donna, I think it is fair to say Steve is here defined as person B.'

'Certainly,' agreed the Judge.

'And do you agree with this, Mr Gallimard?' asked Rideau. 'Is Steve person B in this scenario?'

Gallimard looked skeptical, but reluctantly agreed.

'Henceforth, we may reword the definition of rape in English law to mean such:

Donna commits an offence if—

• he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of Steve with Donna's penis,

• Steve does not consent to the penetration, and

• Donna does not believe that Steve consents.

'This court case has – as many others – taken place in the past tense.'

'Of course,' said the Judge. 'What is your point?'

'My point,' said Rideau, is that we should rearrange the wording of our rape definition to fit the case:

Donna raped Steve if and only if:

• he (Donna) violently penetrated Steve's vagina, anus and mouth with his (Donna's) penis;

• Steve said no to the penetration;

• and Donna heard Steve say no.'

'What is the meaning of this?' asked Gallimard, my only defendant.

'Well, let us look at the definition of rape and see,' suggested Rideau. 'And I think it will become clear that the case has no standing.' He cleared his throat. 'Is Donna a "he"; that is, is Donna a man?'

'No.'

Rideau turned to the rest of the court. 'Are we all in agreement that the defendant is not a man?'

There was general agreement among the spectators, jury and judge.

'Next point of order,' said Rideau. 'Donna is a rapist provided she – the word "she" is here a replacement for the law's specification that the rapist be male – violently penetrated Steve's vagina, anus and mouth with her penis.'

He again looked in bemusement around the room. After seeing their laughing faces at the unfitting new definition of rape, Mr Rideau stepped towards Donna and asked, 'If it's not too personal a question, do you have a penis with which to rape?'

'No.'

'And do you, Steve,' he stepped towards me and leant into my face, 'have a vagina.'

'No.'

Rideau threw his arms in the air. 'Then what is this case about?'

Gallimard, upon remembering how his sole mission was to legally protect and represent me, hastily mumbled, 'Er, we are trying to prove that Donna raped Steve.'

'But the definition of rape, as I have just explained, is that a man forced himself upon a woman or another man.'

Gallimard had nothing to say to this.

Rideau resumed his pacing in front of Steve and Gallimard. 'We know that the events of February 14th was an example of heterosexual intercourse – that is to say, one man and one woman engaging in penetrative sex.' Rideau turned his glare onto Steve. 'As we know from the Sexual Offences Act 2003, a man can be a rapist or a rape victim, but a woman cannot be a rapist.

'It follows, then, that if we are to define this as a rape, Donna (being a woman) must be a rape victim. Was there anyone else involved in the case other than Donna and yourself, Steven?'

'No.'

'Did you rape her?'

'Did I rape her?'

'It's a simple enough question. Were you the attacker in a rape?'

'No.'

'And if the only man present is not a rapist, on what grounds can this be called a rape?'

Nobody had an answer to that question. Steve wanted to raise the point that the law should be changed to include the possibility of female rapists. Gallimard had advised him not to speak out of turn.

Rideau turned to the judge. 'I call for this court to go into recess until we can decide whether or not to continue this case in terms of rape.'

'How are you going to get them to change their minds?' I asked.

'About what?'

'About it being a rape.'

'I suppose we'll just have to let them change the definition.'

'What?'

'Look, they read through the laws regarding rape. They're right,' he said, draining me of confidence in my lawyer. 'Rape is something done by a man, not by a woman.'

'I was raped. Are they claiming it's impossible for me to have been raped?'

'No, it's possible for you to have been raped, but only by another man.'

'But I was raped by a woman. Even so, what difference does it make? I was forced into sex against my will; why does it matter what genitals the rapist had?'

Gallimard sighed, as though my request for a fair trial was nothing short of pedantry. 'What happened to you cannot legally be defined as a rape.'

'But it was a rape. It should be defined as a rape.'

'What difference does it make?'

I was flabbergasted. What difference does it make? This was my life. Since that night

that night that night that fateful night

Since that night, I had been unable to think of anything except what Donna did to me. Rape has, morbidly, been the only thing on my mind since February 14th. It is impossible to think about anything else.

To dismiss that was impossible. If I was to find any justice in the justice system, I would have to prove that Donna raped me. Unless the law changed before my sentencing, I now sadly realised, that would be impossible.

And, even if the law did change, the trial would continue under the law as it existed on February 14th. There is no hope to be found in the court.

'I'm being serious,' Gallimard told me, as though this were all a joke. 'What difference does it make?'

'It's the difference between getting justice and getting a half-hearted dismissal. We need to prove this was rape in order to get justice.'

'Justice? What does that mean to you?'

'I don't know,' I said, since I genuinely didn't know.

'You don't know?' Gallimard reflected skeptically.

'I really don't know.'

'I don't believe that you don't know what justice is,' Gallimard told me. 'If you're so desperate for justice, how come you don't know what it is that you want?'

I really didn't know. I was under oath when in court, and under oath in life. I couldn't remember the last time I had told a lie, and I couldn't remember the last time I had wanted to tell a lie. Now I was being called a liar every way I turned. I was allegedly lying about raping, lying about the definition of rape, lying about my own thoughts. I try to be honest and I try to be good. All I get in response is assault and the claim that it didn't happen.

'I want justice,' I said with as much determination as I could muster. 'I want the knowledge that Donna is in jail for life because of what she did.'

'Why do you care? Are you vengeful and wanting other people to suffer? That's not very nice, you know.'

'I don't want suffering.'

'Then why does it matter how long she goes to prison for?'

'I don't know.' I really don't know. 'She needs to go to prison. That's justice, isn't it?'

'That's punishment. It won't do any good.'

'But I need protection. I need to make sure this won't happen again.'

'She's not going to try this again.'

I wanted to dispute this, but I really didn't know if she would rape me again. I didn't know she would do this in the first place. I wish more than anything that I could go back before this began.

I wish I could go back to before she raped me— But then I would know what was going to happen. I would be in limbo, awaiting her abuse.

I wish I could go back before I met her— But then I would know what was coming.

I wish I could go back before I met her and have my memory wiped— But then it would happen anyway.

I wish I could go back and prevent myself meeting her— But then I would be alone. Back, stuck in the void. I was empty now and I was empty then, but for a brief while in between I was happy.

I wish I could stop myself meeting her, but not lose the memory of the good times— But I would be traumatised still, as I am now, by the memory of that night, that night with many cares oppressed...

I wish I could go back, prevent myself meeting her, and retain the happy memories of the good times with her, but without the memory of what she did that night— But then I would miss her. I would be painfully lonely. And I would know that she existed somewhere in the same world as me. I would seek her out, talk to everybody in Fichleke until we were reunited, and be happy once more, without the knowledge of what she did to me. I would have effectively censored the horror of what she did from my mind, and we would be happy again— But it would still have happened. That would still be who she was: a one-time rapist.

The only way I could ever be happy is if we were still together and it had never happened. That was it. That was my impossible ambition. To be with Donna in a world where we were in love and she had never harmed me. That was the world I was in for two weeks. I was happy – briefly.

That was my rock. I was Sisyphus, in Hell, pushing against that boulder eternally, knowing it would come back to crush me once again.

I could only be happy in a world where Donna hadn't raped me. That was a world I could never retrieve. It existed, and it vanished. My dream disintegrated the night she abused me.

If only I had stopped it. If I had prevented it from happening, I could have been happy. If I had shouted STOP, I could have been happy now. If I had had the courage to say NO, I could have prevented all of this from happening.

But it would have been no use. I knew when she looked into my eyes that fateful night that she could see into my soul. She knew, that had I the ability to summon the words, I would have screamed no and stop for all eternity. She knew I wanted her to stop, and she could see my pain, but she kept going.

I feel guilty that I had allowed the perfect world to be demolished with my consent— But I didn't consent. I did not allow her to do what she did. I had no control. She defeated me. Even if I could have changed the past, it would have happened again, every time because I didn't have the strength to stop her.

I looked at Gallimard, and he was distracted, not thinking about me, and not thinking about the court case. Not thinking about peril or about joy. He was in his own world. If he was content in that world, it would be cruel for me to deprive him of it.

I didn't talk for the rest of the recess. When they called us back into the court, I remained silent unless questioned.

The questions were still the same accusatory attacks at me. I was still uncertain what I had done to stir people's hatred. Presumably reporting the rape was the first step to these attacks. These were not impartial queries. These were not innocent questions to find the necessary answers. These were prying into my brain, seeking out the source of the accusation. The fact I had been raped meant nothing. These vultures were eager for fresh meat to tear apart.

The people of the court, whether on my side or on Donna's, or those who were allegedly neutral, dragged me into ruthless interrogation. Vultures was not the right word. They were not picking at dead flesh. They were creating new death. Vultures was far from the right word. The court was made of undefinable animals who sought nothing more than a new corpse to relentlessly pick at until the fact I had ever been alive was unrecognisable in my mutilated remains.

It made me feel sick to my stomach, but I was beginning to regret going to the police. It felt so wrong. I had seemingly done the right thing. It was supposedly good to report a crime. But this felt very wrong indeed. I was being attacked again and again, and I increasingly felt as though, in the eyes of the court, I was the only person in the room who had done anything wrong.

'Only 15% of serious rape victims report the crime to an authority. Does this not mar your case, then?'

'How?' My stomach bubbled with the same feeling of mysterious guilt. To varying degrees, to alternating strengths, I had been lumbered with an undying feeling of guilt ever since that night

That night.

That night.

That night.

and I didn't know what I could do to shake that feeling. Every question I was asked in court meant that I felt guilty again.

I was made to feel as though I had committed a crime. There was a strong sentiment in the words of everyone in that courtroom, Gallimard included, that I was a liar, and the feeling was so strong and so infrequently disputed, that I subconscious came to believe that I was a liar too.

I understood that a trial had to be balanced. I understood that, in order for it to be fair, there could never be the assumption that the defendant was guilty. I was and am still a defender of the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

However, I could not help but feel that this practice was not being practised here.

'Well, you told us the first thing you did after being raped was go straight into the police office and claim you were raped. Does that not seem a tad hasty? If only 15% of victims ever report the case, it seems unlikely that you would immediately identify what happened to you as rape, and even then that you would immediately report it to the police.'

'Well...' I began. I didn't know what to say. Maybe I hadn't been raped. But I recall being raped.

I also recall reading about people being given pictures of hot air balloons. It was a psychological experiment. When a large group of middle-aged people were asked if they'd ever been on a hot air balloon, naturally some of the people said they had and some said they hadn't.

The group who had never been on hot air balloons were called back six months later. They had all forgotten about the initial meeting. But the psychologists hadn't. The psychologists had spent six months tracking down the families and friends of the middle-aged people who had never been on hot air balloons. They managed to find pictures of all the people as children. They then spent some time with editing software – or some editors were, not the psychologists themselves – and manufactured images of all these people who had never been on hot air balloons stood, as children, next to hot air balloons.

As I say, the people who had never been on hot air balloons were called back after six months. Each of them was shown a picture, which falsely depicted themselves as children next to hot air balloons. The psychologists asked them one simple question. 'Do you recall this day when you were six and you went on a hot air balloon?' Half of them said yes.

That was the fear. That was the terrible idea, that my mind wasn't real. We can know nothing but our thoughts, and they change with the wind. We can recall nothing but our memories, and they are false, and can be snapped like stale bread. What if I hadn't been raped? What if I'd had a bad dream, or eaten cheese too late, or someone had shown me a picture of a frowning face next to a vagina and I'd made the whole thing up in my head?

What if Donna had done nothing wrong? How could she do anything wrong? She's perfect. What if the love of my life was sat across from me in the courtroom? That question I didn't need to wonder. After everything she may or may not have done, my feelings towards her changed, but there was still a strong force of love. I was in love with my captor, my raper, or my innocent.

I thought about how much I'd like to be on a hot air balloon. I'd always been afraid of the height. There was always, instilled within me, the fear that I could fall out. There had always been the horror that I might jump, or put my hands into the fire.

'Were you raped?' Rideau asked.

I was tempted to say no. I remembered being raped. But these people claimed they remembered hot air balloon that they'd never actually witnessed. Perhaps I had experienced a rape which had never actually taken place. Maybe my own memories were false. False memories are far more common than people believe, owing to the universal belief that one's memories are always reliable.

But how can a rape be false? I know I was raped. I was definitely raped. It's a simple fact that I was made to have sex against my will.

That is rape. Sex against one's will is the simple definition of rape. As much as I wish it had never happened, it had. As much as I wish I could forget the rape, I never could. It will haunt me forever.

The best I can do is demand justice. That will not put an end to rape. Seeing Donna go to prison will not remove the event from my history, not will it bar

But justice is justice. Donna cannot be allowed to roam freely and risk the safety of other potential victims.

I pointed across the room at Donna. 'That woman raped me.'

Donna was called up to the stand for questioning this time.

'How would you describe your relationship with Steven?'

'It was beautiful.'

'Any elaboration upon that?'

'We were beautiful. Our relationship was beautiful. Every time we spoke, we realised we had the same niche interests; the same kitsch desires.'

'If the relationship were perfect, what cause had you to sabotage it?'

'I didn't have any. I didn't think I'd done anything wrong. I was making love to the man of my dreams. Sorry if that sounds cheesy, but it's true. Steve is beautiful, in body and in mind. He may now have decided sex isn't for him, and I'm okay with that. But – like any normal couple – we had to give it a go.'

'Would you describe yourselves as a normal couple?'

'That makes us sound boring. It was never boring. Every moment was meticulously planned. We fed the ducks together and ran together in the rain. I don't know if these acts would be considered normal or weird but they were beautiful.'

I hated myself for agreeing with her.

We had yet another recess. By this point, I was losing track of the case. It was not a straightforward matter. I assumed that a known rapist would be sent to jail, but most of the time was devoted not only to discussing the terms of the rape, but also to people actively defending rape.

I watched my life disappear into a series of arguments and recesses. I walked into the brown wooden room with no hope, and left with even less. Despair became the keyword of my life.

When I went home I either had no energy left to relax and fell immediately asleep, or else was awake all night screaming. There was no inbetween.

And so despair came to mind more and more frequently. There was no Steve any more. There was simply a 'Steve' as referred to by those in court. I didn't see anybody outside court. I found counselling to be unhelpful. Besides, I heard the same phrases used by counselors that I had used when in their position.

'How does that make you feel?'

'We need to change these thought processes.'

'You don't sound like you want to get better.'

All these patronising phrases were mirrored back at me, and I instantly recognised them as the counselling shortcuts they were.

All of the meaningless sentences made me strongly suspect that these counselors were uninterested in what was happening to me, and cared only about being able to quickly and easily dismiss me and move onto the next subject.

And so I rarely spoke to anyone outside the court. The few trips to the shops I found necessary to make were undertaken without any human contact. If I couldn't find the right food I needed, I just went hungry that night. I had no appetite anyway, and it was not worth the pain of trying to talk to somebody normally in order to ask where the food was.

The longer the court case dragged on, the further I felt from reality. I had had no chance of reality anyway, so the court could drag me for as long as they liked.

I had never understood the origin of the buzz in 'buzzword', but the furious anguish with which overused terms now buzzed around my brain fully justified the slang expression's use. 'Rape' and 'consent' and 'abuse' and 'trial' and 'love' were all to be expected from such a case, but they all became a great deal more painfully tiresome the more they were used.

My head became a barrel of bees which buzzed endlessly in my mind, and I was stung ceaselessly by the haunting detail of my own abuse.

She plunged her body down onto me, and I was powerless to escape.

I knew this to be the case with absolute certainty; and yet the tormentors on the other side of the court had me doubleguessing. I was doubting everything I had ever known to be true.

There were days when I knew I hadn't been raped. There were days when lawyers told me for certain that Donna was innocent, and I believed them. But, at the same time, I became certain that I was not a person, and I knew that I had never been born.

Day-in, day-out, I was told conflicting views until I found it impossible to remember the facts of the case. I privately concluded that my traumatic memories were merely one opinion in a world where every thought about the decency of rape is equally valid.

Mr Gallimard kept reassuring me that our side would win. 'Because we're telling the truth,' I said. His smile faded. He never properly explained why. When I asked why he was so sure we'd win, he smugly said, 'Because I'm more experienced than Rideau.' I thought this was no reason to talk about winning, and his satisfied grin turned into a disappointed glare once more. The world is a confusing place.

Mr Gallimard was certain than he would defend me, and that our side of the case would reign triumphant. But I had heard all the ways he had tried to spin different stories in different directions. I got the sense that, in his mind, I was just another boulder he had to meaninglessly roll in another direction. He made shoddy arguments, and I almost begrudged that he was on my side.

Had the names been picked from a hat differently, I knew Gallimard would be fighting against me and that Rideau would be fighting in my favour. Donna and I had each been lumped with a lousy lawyer who argued whatever they had been told to argue.

There is no loyalty amongst these people. There is no sense that right and wrong are distinct. There are only existential problems, which can only be addressed once a side had been arbitrarily been chosen.

I can feel it coming. I can always remember. I am tormented by the ghosts of that night.

Do you remember— Don't worry.

'Shut up!'

'Sorry, Steven?'

'I'm sorry. That wasn't addressed to you.'

'Then who was it addressed to?'

'I'm sorry.'

I sighed and sat down. The defence got up and took his stand.

'Do you not think,' said the defence, 'that a man who had sexual relations with a woman – who dated her for a fortnight and willingly went back to her apartment – before thanking her is making a ridiculous claim in calling it rape?'

'I think that sounds right. What is your defence, Steven? How can you make that accusation?'

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how I could argue the truth.

'Do you not think that he is doing a disservice to real victims by calling this incident of casual sex within a relationship "rape"?'

'That sounds about right. Steven?'

I just sat there with my head in my hands. The pain doesn't grow but the hurt still shows.

I went back to my dreamlike state. I tried to dream up a world far from here.

I tried to imagine happiness, and what fresh strawberries smelled like.

I tried to imagine the spring, and the summer. The warm months. I supposed I had missed them now. They would be long gone by the time

I knew spring and summer would come again within the next year, and I would relish in seeing the daffodils burst from the soil, excited as ever to be the first glowing faces of the new year, if only I could pay attention long enough to know the world around me was more than black and white.

I wondered if I would be happy next spring, or if I would be stuck in gloom and the memory of the pain I suffered that night.

I wondered if each year would be a tormentous calendar, reminding me of all the sorrows which had gone by.

I knew for certain that I would never enjoy February 14th, and that the first half of February would always bring back conflicting memories of the two happy weeks Donna and I spent together.

I predicted that January would always be a terrifying build up to the memories that February would bring rushing back, and that the second half of February (as well as, in all likelihood, March) would be lost in the bow waves of that night and its annual successors.

I wondered if things would be fine by April, or if April would be the cruellest month. May was good for most people, but my most recent May had been spent shut indoors, hiding from the judgement of the creatures who made up society.

I sighed a deep sigh, even as I dreamt, wondering when things would be okay again; when I would be happy again; when I would cope with the process of a year again; and when I would finally be able to properly dream.

I opened my eyes and I was in court again.

'A man cannot be raped. The legal definition in England and Wales defines rape as an act occurring exclusively against women.'

That was true, or at least, legal professionals interpreted it to be true. And interpretation is one side of events, and the side where a man cannot be raped was the side which had been chosen, regardless of the fact that I had been raped and was here to prove it.

'We cannot charge Donna with rape unless the law were different,' Rideau said. 'And even if the law were to change, the night in question took place under the jurisdiction of the Sexual Offence Act 2003.'

This had all been established at the start of the case. Yet still it was being argued endlessly, despite the lack of new evidence. Just like religion, I laughed to myself. My laughter made me feel guilty and I had no idea why.

We were going back in time, back back to the start of the case, and any potential progress which might have been reached so far (but so far had not been) would have been reduced to nothing.

They were arguing over the definition of the claim I had made. I knew, or I thought I knew, that Donna had raped me. And, from what both sides of the court had told me – with the judge's affirmation – a man could not be raped; at least not in a legal sense.

This had been evident so long, and I had long accepted that I would not win the case without renegotiated definitions. The definitions were arbitrary; the outcome was not. If Donna went free without any form of repercussions for the assault she had committed, then justice would not have been done.

I was beginning to talk like a lawyer. I was beginning to think like a lawyer. Everything I knew took place within the confines of meaningless terms. I has spent so long within these wooden walls that I was becoming part of this new world.

The horrendous behaviour of Gallimard and Rideau was infecting me. They behaved like children fighting over a toy. The judge was their plaything. I feared these legal representatives more than I feared the rapist.

But I had once loved Donna, and love was an impossible feeling to shake. I felt the same familiar enemies: guilt; dread; and fear. There was a large and powerful part of me which was still in love with Donna. Even knowing who she was and what she had done, I still loved Donna more than anything else in the world. I hated myself because of this. I felt guilty that I could not take my own court case seriously when I felt affection for my opponent.

But, on the other hand, this was the fuel which kept me going. I couldn't hate Donna. Even if I could try, I would never be able to hate Donna. And this is how I knew I was on the side of good. I was not pursuing a court case against Donna out of hate. I did not wish to send her to jail to punish her. I wanted to see her rehabilitated. I knew she was a good person, and I wanted to undo the bad. I had long banished the foolish notion that everything would be all right in the end. I knew, and had known for some time now, that after this case was done, Donna would be out of my life permanently, and would continue to haunt my memories and nightmares and perhaps even my dreams.

Good and evil were perhaps becoming arbitrary in this case. The court focused on debating skills, and ignored the reality of the situation.

I had no doubt that there were good lawyers in the world. Rideau and Gallimard were certainly bad lawyers; but when I could love the woman who raped me, I knew there was nobody who was fully evil. We are all good people, but some of us do bad things.

I had a recurring dream. I dreamt that I was back in court. Every night— No, not every night, for most nights I was unable to sleep at all.

When I could sleep, I had the same dream.

No! It was not a dream! A dream has the potential to be innocent. This was a nightmare. And nightmares are usually an unpleasant vision. Instead, I thought perhaps nightmare was not the right word. Nightmares were unpleasant but unbelievable. This vision was not only believable, but the truth.

Every time I fell asleep, I was in the same place. I was in court again. I was in court, and the people in the court were yelling abuse at me.

Each time I had the dream, it was more and more unpleasant. It was impossible to rest, because my sleeping visions were the same as what I saw every day in court.

But each time I dreamt, the dream-nightmare-vision became worse. Each time, it changed slightly.

The first time it happened, it was roughly the same as that day in court. It was a retelling of the day's events. People attacked me, and hurled their torturous words in my direction.

But the more I had that vision, the more it changed. It became abstracted. At first, they were shouting their words at me, but soon they were physically throwing their words at me. Every time they spoke, words came pouring out their mouths and into their hands. The words were big and grey. They all looked soft and fluffy, like rainclouds, but when they hit me, they were sharp and pierced my skin.

Whenever I bled, the court began to laugh. After a while of these visions, the building itself began to laugh along with its inhabitants.

First the words were thrown by Mister Rideau alone, then later they were thrown by the judge as well. Soon after that, the jury began to throw words. Donna never needed to throw words in the vision, because every time she opened her mouth, a great roar emanated from within.

Once she had stripes like a tiger, but they faded and she became a fearsome and indescribable object which vanished from my memory every time I woke up.

I became afraid of going sleep, since I knew the vision would get worse each time I did. When, after three days of stress in court, I finally fell unconscious ('sleep' might be too voluntary a word for the action), the nightmare was the worst it had ever been.

Words were being thrown by both sides. Mister Gallimard was throwing sharp words from the seat next to me. The people in the seats behind me – the audience, for want of a better word – threw their words at me as though they were shuriken.

As I bled from every pore of the warzone my skin had become, I felt myself become woozy and numb until I awoke. Each time I slept after that, the same thing happened, but more severe.

Donna in this vision was an unseeable blur, but so too was every other person in the building. I could no longer distinguish between those claiming to act in my favour and those against me.

Back in court again, and the courts had so fully absorbed me that I found it near-impossible to care about anything. Although the lawyers were debating back and forth about me, I no longer wanted to hear anything they had to say. I wanted to be frank and tell them that I just wanted this to be over. I just wanted to move on with my life without thinking about that night except when absolutely necessary.

Sadly, court was one of the places where discussing a past crime was absolutely necessary. And, no matter how I pleaded, the onlookers remained the same cold hearts. A decision would ultimately be formed by a jury of people strongly against me, with no clear reason for animosity. Somehow, they had turned their glare onto me, as though my accusation of Donna was itself a crime.

Victimhood is a choice in the eyes of the dispassionate public.

There were hours' more talks. Weeks, possibly. I can't remember how long the arguments continued for. I had switched off. I had said everything I needed to say, and I cared only about justice, a word I no longer knew the meaning of. I wasn't out for revenge, and knew that seeing Donna go to jail would not bring me any happiness.

I had no wish to hurt any living thing on Earth. My entire philosophy for living was grounded on peace. I was never a vengeful person. When I began the court trial, my aim was justice. It has always been my view that justice and revenge are opposites.

Have you ever been hopeless? Have you ever known the days where nothing in the world could help you? Have you barely survived for months on the belief that everything was hopeless and that the coming of the reaper would be a great blessing?

That's how I was.

There was nothing, after February 14th, which could save me. There was nothing I wanted. I thought I wanted death, but even the end of existence would not help me in the slightest. Even suicide could not allow me to feel.

The court case continued, droning on like any other court case. There would never be peace in this wooden rooms. But, for my part, I had brought some small sense of serenity.

Even if it was unmentionable and unspoken, it was certainly the case that I had calmed a few minds. There were people on the jury who no longer looked angry. I could see in their faces, as I daydreamed about their thoughts, that there was some degree of hate which had left them as I spoke my words.

My counselor suggested that I attend a support group. I had reluctantly returned to counselling and sought help from people who didn't really care about me. On the plus side, it looked good for me from a legal standpoint if I was seeing a counselor. Lawyers for some reason took a person more seriously who was talking about their problems.

Of course, if I spoke openly about the abuse I had faced, I was called a liar. If I spoke privately to somebody, nobody else wanted to hear me, but I was taken slightly more seriously. If a professional could vouch that I was definitely mental, at least it ended the speculation.

On the negative side, this meant I had to speak to the counselor. The counselor was completely useless half the time.

On the positive side, the counselor was occasionally not useless.

Either way, I ended up in a gritty and empty room on the outskirts of Fichleke. This was a long way from Charlotte Street, in a part of town I never thought I'd need to visit. That was probably why they located the support group here. If it were in the town centre, everybody would point and ask what the building was. If everybody knew it was a place for rape victims to find support, then anyone seen entering or leaving the building would be cursed by the judgement of the public.

I don't know how helpful I found any of it anyway. My mind was so numbed by my experiences that it was impossible to perceive myself as anything other than a meandering object waiting to bump into something or somebody interesting.

Other rape victims and myself sat around on disintegrating plastic school chairs talking about our experiences. It was a calming time, and it brought me some relief to know that I was not alone in what had happened. However, I felt that the help provided was overstated. I had heard of people who attended support groups and their lives immediately became better. These people were either exaggerating or part of a different group. Perhaps they were not rape victims. Perhaps if they were addicts, the company of other people in a similar situation was enough to change their mindset. Well, from the perspective of a rape victim it was going to take a lot more than company to change my life. I was grateful anyway, but I still didn't know if I would ever recover.

As I watched the people speak about their experiences, I was awestruck by what they had to say. Everybody's experience was unique, and everybody provided a different insight.

A tormenting fear came over me; a conflicting emotion; I was keen to share my story, but I feared it being heard. I saw each successive victim (it feels wrong to use that word – the title victim removes all other identity from our lives – but at the same time that's all I am – I am stuck in a rut of think about nothing else except that night that night that night) recount their sad tale.

In another conflicting spell of presumably misplaced guilt, I felt like I was one of the lucky ones. There were people here who told of how they had been violently beaten. There were people who had been tied up or thrown around. There were people who were lucky to have gotten away alive.

Some of these victims were raped by multiple people at once. Some of them had been raped by different people in succession. Some of them had been raped by their partner and been unable to break off the relationship. For some people it had continued again and again for months on end. For some people, they had managed to escape one abusive partner, only to have the same thing happen with the next person they met. I felt incredibly lucky to have only had one attacker, and only one instance.

I felt the heat of the searchlight come over me when it was finally my turn to speak. I was reluctant and considered asking if I could be skipped past. However, as these people had shared incredibly painful experiences – and some of these people had never spoken about what happened to them before today – I felt it was my duty to recount the tale of Steve and Donna.

I told them everything. Every detail of how we fell in love and how she turned around unexpectedly one day and attacked me. I told them how much it hurt me that there was never an end. Everything had seemed so perfect up until that night

that night

that night

I feel like I am on a perilous boat, rocking me to oblivion. There is no positive way to describe how much I want to die in this infinite instant.

Everything had seemed perfect, and then I had no hope of closure. It ended with the worst thing that had ever happened to me. That was how I became single. That was how I lost the greatest thing that had ever happened to me – with the worst thing imaginable. The combination of the two would always torment me.

We had another disappointing day in court. This was going nowhere. I was still hopeless about where this was going. I didn't know what I hoped for. I suppose there was some thought in my mind that there would be a magical solution; if I won the court case maybe there was some way for us to rewrite history so that that night had never happened.

Of course, I had to live in the sad reality. What had happened between Donna and me in the happy time we were a couple could never be repaired. Nothing anybody could say or do could take me back to that place.

I sat, hopelessly, distracted, in that dusty courtroom of dusty courtiers, feeling nothing but distrust and discontent. I wondered when I would feel okay again. I wondered if I would.

Donna kept trying to catch my eye from the other side of the room. I was horrified about catching her eye, but I reluctantly did so. And with that came a mysterious form of relief. I was expecting her to have hatred in her eye, but there was not a trance.

Instead, all I could find in her expression was that familiar, loving smile. I couldn't fathom how there could still be love there after what had happened, but there was. Try as I might to see that glimmer in her eye as one of loathsome torment, I could only see that she was still in love with me. And, as little as I wanted to admit it, I was in love with her too.

She caught me in the court's corridor as we were leaving.

'What do you want?' I asked; I will never recall how I said it; whether it was rude or polite; whether it was upbeat or macabre; and whether it was dismissive or attractive.

'I want to talk to you.'

'What do you have to say?'

'I want to say,' she began, and I had never been less certain about which words were about to come from somebody's mouth,'that I miss you.'

I was dumbstruck, and then: 'You miss me?'

'Of course I miss you. Did you think I'd suddenly stop caring?'

'You didn't seem to care much before.'

'I did care.'

'Not on that night that night that night—'

'Are you okay?'

'Of course I'm not okay. You raped me.'

'Whatever you think happened...' She placed a hand on my shoulder, and I realised this was the first physical contact I'd had since that night. 'I'm willing to put that all behind us.'

'What do—' My throat was dry, and my voice came out croaky; I gulped and restarted, 'What do you mean?'

'I mean I love you, Steve. I love you, I love, and nothing's going to change that.'

I paused. 'But you have changed that.'

'Steve, I mean it. I love you.' I could see in her eyes that she meant it. I didn't know how anybody could be so cruel and yet so deeply in love. 'I'm sorry that this rift has come between us. But I mean it. We're perfect for each other. I promise I'll never hurt you again.'

She looked, for all I could tell, to be perfectly genuine.

'I want to believe you,' I said.

'Then believe me.'

'But I put my trust in you before. And now, because of you, I can never trust anyone.'

She was nearly in tears. 'I love you, Steve. You could drop the case. You could put an end to this court case. And we could put this behind us. I want us both to be happy. I want us to live a life of splendor. Can we be together once more?'

And I thought about it. I hate myself, but I considered it. I thought how easy it would be to walk out this retched court and never return. I thought how with a small amount of emotional repression, I could try to block out the memory of what she did, and love her just like I used to do.

But then I realised it could never work. I could never forget what she did, and that memory would haunt me forever, whether I got back together with her or not. And (again, it makes me hate myself) the only reason I said know is that I didn't think I had the strength to lie to myself.

Stockholm syndrome is such a serious condition. To fall in love with your captor was so horrifying. And nobody can ever truly understand what it is like to fall in love with your captor, or why it would happen unless they've been there themselves.

I've known of Stockholm syndrome for a very long time, but I never thought it could happen to me. And now, as I looked into the eyes of the woman I loved more than anybody I had ever met, I wanted so much to be with her again.

I wanted to go back to her house. Obviously I would never want her to attack me again. But I could see – or I thought I could see – that she was serious and honest when she told me she would never hurt me again. And, if this were true, it would mean more to me than anything on Earth. It had more worth than anything else in my life to wish that I were with her, in her home— In our home, living out our days happily. I could spend all eternity with her, knowing what she'd done, but safe in the fact that she would never do it again.

I went back to the support group. I thought it would do me some good to have some company. But, really, it was difficult to find here. Hearing everyone's stories made me feel sad, and I'd had enough sadness to last a lifetime.

I really wanted somebody to spend time with. I needed a close friend, and I needed someone to confide in. Most of the people here were people I could relate to, but I had no connection with. Besides, every instance of rape was different. If I wanted someone to talk to about what Donna did, it would be very difficult to find that company in somebody who had been raped by a stranger. Or somebody who had been raped as part of a violent violation.

That is not to say I did not sympathise, nor is it to suggest that I had no way to communicate. But I wanted someone to have a close friendship with, where I knew we shared something, and we could talk about our problems if we needed, but primarily that we were there for each other as friends.

Anyway, I sat and listened to all these people tell me how they had moved on since last time; how they had learnt to cope in some small way; who they had spoken to, and who they had yet to speak to; what they had thought which had made them laugh and what they had thought which had made them cry. One person told a harrowing story of how a can of tomatoes they had witnessed while shopping had made them burst into tears in aisle 6.

There was a newcomer this week. Mandy, her name was. She told us she had wanted to come to the previous session, but didn't have the confidence to turn up.

She recounted her experiences with a former lover whom she rejected and who came back unexpectedly and attacked her. She had placed so much trust in this one person and now she didn't know who to trust. She wanted to trust the support group, but she was uncertain if they would be of service. It occurred to me that I still thought of the group as 'them' and not 'us'.

The session ran smoothly, and I was thankful for some company, but it was still too dark. There was comfort in being here, but there was still no element of my life that didn't revolve around talking about rape. I needed some freedom, and I needed it fast.

After the session was over, I went up to speak to Mandy.

'You're Steve, aren't you?' she asked. 'I'm not very good with names.'

'Well you got mine right,' I told her, smiling. 'What you said really touched me.'

'Really?'

'It really did. I went through something similar. I talked about it last week, and I also have trust issues. But it really meant something to hear you talk today.'

'Thank you. So what happened with you? Did your boyfriend come back after you'd dumped him?'

'No. We were still together.'

'While you were still together. I don't know if that's better or worse. Either way, it's horrible.'

'And not a boyfriend. A girlfriend.'

'A girlfriend?'

'Yes. It was my girlfriend. We'd been out on a date and... Well, I don't really want to talk about it any more.'

'I understand,' she said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

'Do you want to get a drink some time?'

'What?' She had a mixed expression, and it occurred to me that she might have thought I was some freak who turned up to rape survivors' meetings to arrange dates. I was a very different sort of freak altogether.

'Not like that! Not like that at all. I just mean... Do you want to hang out as friends?'

'I don't know. I'm a bit...' She waved her arms around uncertainly, evidently as an indication of the supreme unknowability of what she was a bit like. 'I'm a bit out of sorts. I don't really know what's happening.'

'Okay. I just thought we were both probably in need of company.'

She laughed. 'Well I definitely need that. But, is it okay if we don't talk about...' She gestured around with her arms again, this time apparently to refer to the event and possibly our shared situation in life. 'Is it okay if we don't talk about this?'

'Sure. I just want someone to talk to. Normally. Just normal talking like normal people.'

'Well, it does sound awfully nice to be normal.'

I smiled broadly. 'Then normal is what we'll try to be.'

We sat at the bar in the Dead Queen and ordered as many drinks as we would make us feel like ordinary people. In the end, it turned out to be 3 ¾.

'What's your favourite movie?' I asked her.

'I don't know,' Mandy said, smiling, evidently relieved at the opportunity to remove herself from the dreary world of courts and counsellors. 'I always feel like I should have a really intelligent answer prepared. But honestly I don't watch really arty films.'

'Me neither. I would watch a film which captured real life in a passionate way but still contained as many laughs as possible. The sort of film which could turn a tragedy into something laughable without disrespecting the tragically inflicted people.'

She grinned ear to ear and said, half-shouting, 'Exactly!' before releasing the force of her voice and dropping a few decibels, 'That's the sort of film I want to see. But who makes films like that?'

'There's probably somebody, somewhere.'

'She probably lives in Argentina and makes films on a budget of three hundred pesos, so nobody watches them.'

'Probably. You know what the British are like with subtitles.'

'Pathetic, you mean?' Mandy asked.

'Precisely.'

'I can't exactly act high and mighty about it. The last film I watched was a tacky sci-fi. Absolutely rubbish, but at least I didn't have to think.'

'What was it called? It sounds like my sort of film.'

'Cemetery Gates.'

'I've seen that! I went to see it when it came out, and I could tell during the adverts beforehand that it would be bad.'

'You always can tell.'

'Do you think they do it deliberately?'

'How do you mean?'

'Do you think someone deliberately picks out the worst adverts and lumps them together with the trashiest films?'

'Probably. Can you imagine having that as a job?'

'I can imagine it, and it's not pleasant. What would you put on your CV?'

'Maybe nobody ever leaves that job, so they don't need to put it on their CV. They all just stay in the same laborious position for life. Or maybe it's just one person who does all of them. She or he is a world-leading expert in connecting the quality of adverts with the quality of films.'

'What will happen when they die?'

'I guess they'll just have to stop making bad films.'

'And good films.'

'That's true. They'd just have to stop making films. Or else standardise all adverts.'

'It's becoming that way anyway. There are only a few companies who still advertise at the cinema, so they're taking over that market.'

'That sounds like a dystopia.'

'Who knows? It could work out for the best. Maybe it will end up as only one advertiser who pays for those screenings, so each film will be preceded by a bearably brief flashing shot telling us which brand of cola to buy.'

We both laughed, and I glanced across the bar at the range of drinks which I knew would all taste the same by this point.

I apologise for what I have missed. My mind is twisted by the events of this year, and I have no hope of recalling every detail.

I have picked out what I hope are the moment significant moments of what happened to me. I understand that some people may have wished to see what happened to me between that night and going to the police station.

But the reality is impossible. My mind could never formulation, and no objective thought could have approached my appearance with any level of appreciation for the contents of my mind. I barely left the house, as I did after the court case started, but with no hope of reaching a conclusion.

I had trusted all the people I had told about that night. I suspected at the time that trust was not the right decision. I was paranoid, and convinced that anybody I mentioned my life to was out to get me. I was mistrustful, and my counsellor told me this was unhealthy.

I tried – desperately tried – as hard as I could to open myself up so I was able to talk about abuse without breaking down. I eventually reached a point where I told a lot of people – friends and acquaintances – about Donna and what had happened; I believed this to be the best way of coping; it seemed that the public could not be trusted, because the story fermented into gossip, and I received attention which was not in my favour.

There was a story in a regional newspaper one week which described my life in excruciating detail. Entitled 'THE MAN WHO "LOVES" WOMEN BUT HATES MAKING LOVE', it contained scathing remarks about my childhood, my sexuality and my mental health. The concluding paragraph stated that I was either making up my claims to gain attention or else it was my fault for dating a straight woman and not expecting to be made to have sex.

As an emotionally vulnerable human being, this article sent me into a serious depression and I was unable to leave my bed for several days for fear I may interact with the universe.

Worst of all, the piece claimed Donna was an ordinary woman who had no way of knowing I didn't consent. If the writer had truly known the expression on her face that night

that night, there is no way they could turn a blind eye and write scathing reports about me. If journalists knew what it was like to be raped, there is no way they could continue to apologise and disguise the reality of the situation.

Three days after the article had been published and widely distributed online and in print, my lawyer rang me up to suggest I don't read it.

By this point I had already lost a lot of sleep.

A different newspaper sent me an email. They had previously tried to call me, but I was no longer answering the phone out of fear. The email said that I was welcome to write a response piece about my experience with the legal system.

Now, I have plenty of complaints about the legal system. Even putting aside my initial trauma, I had received so much abuse from every direction that I was in trouble even if the legal system had operated correctly.

The primary trouble with the British legal system is that weight is given to emotion over fact. Courts are dominated by emotional responses, yet so many lawyers lack basic empathy.

Justice is not a synonym for revenge, but nobody seems to have informed the general public.

I was initially skeptical about the impact of another newspaper article. I now held not only a distrust of newspapers, but also a strong opposition to the basic premise of mass media. If everybody is to be fed the same version of events with the same biased variant on fact, how can there ever be reasoned discussion?

But this would be different. This was my opportunity to show a different side. A caring and compassionate approach not only to rape, but also to reforming the legal system itself.

I was flooded with ideas about what to write. I could show my point of view. I could actively and creatively show my point.

The newspaper rang back when I was halfway through my article, stating they'd had a change of mind and no longer wished to hear my viewpoint.

Every newsagent I passed shouted headlines at me in full capitals. The local reporters and aspiring criminals tormented me by littering the media with 'WOMAN-HATING MAN CLAIMS "RAPE" BY "GIRLFRIEND"'. From the way they were written, I would have been unsurprised should my gender also appear in scare quotes.

In my dreams, somebody loves me. In my mind, there is hope that I can be happy. That I can be part of something. Abandoning the hopeless realm of post-rape depression, my ambition is to enjoy some small element of the world I live in.

I highly doubt this will come through love. After what happened, I can't imagine ever regaining the trust to love again. Even if somebody is perfect for me, it would be near-impossible to put my faith in them now.

So this happiness, or at least contentment, can only arrive in a way which doesn't involve putting too much hope in one person. I can no longer trust humanity. And yet I can't conceive of a way to find this contentment through solitude. In what sense can isolation ever lead to peace?

I am helplessly devoted to love, and this devotion betrayed me. Love was my religion, and now I know the devil.

As I walk the lonely streets I used to walk along with her, every footstep brings back the memory of pain. Endless hellish rocking and the sharp thrusts of an emotional killer filled my thoughts with every motion.

Each stone on the trail through Fichleke town centre caused a vivid flashback to that awful night.

But what was worse than the negative memories were the positive ones. When we fed the ducks with Donna's favourite bread. The hours when we talked about the endless abilities of cinema. The gentle kisses she placed on my neck and I placed on hers.

These thoughts were all fresh in my mind. They were as close as the soft press of fingertips which once sealed them. But, just as it was with fresh fruit, even something so sweet as fresh memories can rot.

How could I live knowing that life's perfect moments, which I once knew so well, were now infected with evil and could never be retrieved?

The mental abuse overthrew me, but the warm reminiscences were cold anguish.

Back in court again, and the defendant was trying to accuse me of something. I wasn't quite sure what. I'm not certain of anything any more. The rapist – or suspected rapist – may have raped me, or it could all be a twisted fantasy I conjured on my own for some unexplainable reason, as so many people seem claim.

The court case ran on and on, repeating itself and tripping up on its own lies. Everyone who now spoke had apparently forgot the original aim of entering the tormenting building, and instead saw the stiff wooden walls which caged us unwillingly in hateful unity as an open opportunity to throw slurs at one another during this brief period in the public eye.

I'm a fan of philosophy, but I have always seen it as somewhat objective. Philosophy is something which exists in its own world; a place devoid of life or purpose. The aim of philosophy is supposedly to educate, but really to entertain.

People go to parties or clubs to discuss philosophy, then use the alcohol on display to distract themselves from any hypothetical function of philosophy.

Having philosophy turned upon oneself is incredibly disorientating. Philosophy allows us to question the universe. Fortunately for the limited minds of civilisation, humans never see themselves as part of the universe. Any analysis of a topic on a broad scale allows us to ignore the relevance of the analysis on ourselves. In short, talking about everything in general allows us to forget anything in particular.

Hence it is the case that this court confuses me no end. I have long questioned what reality means and what is true and false. No matter how long I question the commonly accepted facts for, I am always able to go back to a point of ignoring any question of my own reality. If I tell myself I am not real, it is impossible to believe, because I know I have told myself it. But if I tell myself I am the only person in the universe, it would be convincing; were it not for the fact that I had long since lost the conviction that I was really a person at all.

Solipsism is vastly overrated as an in-depth concept. People assume it to be the be-all and end-all of discussion. It is not, since even solipsism takes the existence of the self for granted. It is far easier to believe oneself to be the only person in the universe than to believe everyone else exists apart from oneself.

Having said this, I would very much like to believe that I am real as is everyone around me; I would also like to believe that nothing bad has ever happened, and certainly I would like to believe that the events of that night never happened; importantly, I would like to believe no bad things ever happened, because I would like it to be the case that no bad things had ever happened and for it to be true that that night never took place.

Unfortunately, I am at the centre of a debate on the topic of my own truths. The facts which I know to be true – that I was raped; that I was in love with Donna; that I trusted her more than anything in the world and she violated me; that I am an honest man; that I did not consent to sex with Donna on February 14th; that I am a man; that a man who is raped can be the victim of rape – have all been drawn into wormhole of Schrödingerian truthfulness.

At the twisted words of a legal and logical entangler, I have been convinced that the facts I know to be true are untrue; or at least that they might be untrue. The fiction and the fact have all been talked about in such intensive and stressful detail, and analysed so thoroughly and tactlessly, that I can no longer remember what is real and what is false. If somebody mentioned my ride on a hot air balloon, I would have quite willingly accepted it as true. The night I was raped, however, was becoming a distant unsurity.

But of course it is real. If I could fully fictionalise the event, that might go some way towards helping me recover from the trauma. But, of course, I felt the abuse, I was scarred by what happened, and no fiction or even biographical account could go any way towards prevented what happened on that night—

That night—

That night—

No description could ever capture the dreaded events in any level of detail real enough to explain the horror of being subjected to such violent abuse as Donna—

My prima donna.

Prima donna volta.

—as Donna (my love; my former love; my future love; my dreaded love) put me through on that night—

That night—

That night with many cares and toils oppressed...

'I ask the accuser: did you, with explicit and clear intent, explain to Donna that you had no desire for sex that night?'

Should I have to explain? Can it not be assumed that nobody wants sex unless they specifically state so? Innocent until proven guilty?

'I don't understand the question.'

'Did you want to have sex with Donna?' asked Mr Gallimard.

'No.'

'That was not the question,' the opponent, Rideau, said snarkily. 'Did you tell Donna you had no desire for sex?'

I was unclear how to answer. It was clear that I did not consent to sex. What more needs to be said?

'In short,' Rideau said, adapting the question to put me more clearly in the wrong, 'did you say no?'

I thought about this. In truth, I could not remember what I said. I had tried so hard to blank out the horrors of that night, that bringing the

I suppose I had to delve back into the darkest, most painful area of my mind in order to retrieve such traumatic information; and I supposed that this was necessary in order to get the prized justice which allowed me to have peace in my own mind; but I thought it unlikely that this would go any way to helping me; I took Donna to court because I believed it was the right thing to do; I was now significantly regretting this, and thought it definite that (were I to be given the option again, back all those months ago when I went distantly to the police in vain hope of protection) I would have refused to tell anything, and privately kept the tales of abuse to myself

I knew that was not the healthy option, that it would only lead to psychological distress, alongside feelings or irrational guilt and the secretive stress of silence; and yet it seemed to me that such a scenario could be no worse than the reality of sitting before so many judgemental spectators and describing the truth in a way all compassionate people would take as the fact it was, but which everybody in the room seemed determined to deny, perhaps out of a false belief instead in the inherent goodness of humanity.

'Well,' asked Rideau impatiently, hoping not for an answer, but for an affirmation of my insignificance, 'did you say no?'

I open up that memory again, the shunned thought, and trawled through, word for word, to see what I said, to see the images and sounds appear once more in my head, written as words on the imagined page.

We pass streets upon streets upon streets as we run through the town I once knew as home and now know as anytime or anywhere because Donna is my everything. We make it, finally, to her doorway and kiss and embrace once again.

'Where is this going?' she asks for the final time.

'Where would you like it to go?'

'I'd like us to do more together,' she says.

'What does that mean? Do you want to spend more time together? If you'd like, we can spend the rest of our lives together.'

'I mean more stuff together.'

My face goes slightly red and I become uncomfortably uncertain about what she means. 'What is stuff?' Before she can answer, I say, 'I'm not sure I want to do stuff.'

'Come on,' she says, reaching a hand down and rubbing my upper thigh.

'Donna, I don't think I want want to do what you're thinking.' For the first time we are distanced. 'Maybe we're not on the same wavelength at the moment.'

'Come on. We're perfect for each other. We should take this relationship to the next level.'

'But I thought you said everything was perfect as it was?'

'I thought you said we could always add to perfection.'

'But I didn't mean it like this.'

'Neither did I.'

We lean back, kissing against the door, but I'm not sure I feel like kissing any more. Donna fumbles around in her pocket for her key, before opening the door. Then she squeezes my behind against my will.

She grabs my hand and we run upstairs. In her bedroom I kiss her delicately and say, 'I don't feel like doing anything more. I just want to be here.'

'I love you,' she says. But that changes and she starts unbuckling my trousers.

'Donna!'

'Steve!' she says passionately.

She fully removes my trousers. 'Donna, all I want is to kiss you. And not even necessarily that. I just want to be with you.'

'I want to be with you, too,' she says softly, gazing lovingly into my eyes. I don't want to deprive her of anything she wants, since she's so perfect.

We sit, partially unclothed and hug for a few moments more. I kiss her, then say, 'I wrote more of your poem.'

I jump up, find my trousers at the foot of the bed and retrieve the piece of paper from my pocket. I unfold it three times and read:

I love her though it's just a bar meeting.

Her name was Donna and this was our date.

I don't sleep much tonight. I fear my love is fleeting.

"I love you." And such words were our fate.

Well, I am no great poet, but I care.

I dream to be with Donna when I'm old.

I don't wish to intrude, but then I dare.

I love my Donna and my love is bold.

But love holds no gates open for my fears,

Nor any room for error but mine own.

The presence of my Donna dams my tears.

And never shall I ever feel alone.

As soon as I rejoice—

She bats the paper out my hand and it lands somewhere under the dresser. 'I don't want you to read poetry.' Then she pushes her face so close to mine that I can feel her hot soft breath at the back of my throat. 'I want you to make love to me.'

She pulls me over on top of her. I am uneasy. I am unwilling, I am the mannequin man with no thoughts and emotions of my own.

Donna pulls down my boxer shorts and then rolls over onto me, so she is perched firmly on my crotch. Then I see in her face, in her eyes, in her mind, the drop, the final plunge, she pushes herself down onto me, and I feel myself enter her.

By this point her force has fully overwhelmed me. I am powerless to protest. She has complete control over me. All the pleasure I felt for her so recently vanishes. A romance turns to horror and I will myself nervously to escape.

This is a pain I could never have known Donna would bring. Why would she do this to me? She looks deep into my eyes and can see my fear. I look back, a desperate and certain plea for help. I am desperate to escape, but nothing I can say nor do will set me free.

She thrusts herself into an endless hellish rocking. I go to scream out, but what do I say? She steals sex from me. The word cannot be 'no'. I must enjoy this. If coitus ever struck a fear to my soul, it has now become the epitome of sin. How can I love her if I don't wish to make love to her? How can this be a romance if this is not casual sex?

I look across at her sat on me. The love of my life has propelled me into this torment, and there is nothing I can say, nothing I can do but stick by it.

'Put more effort in,' she tells me. It's taking all my effort not to die.

I see her. The love of my life has cast me into the worst of all conceivable circumstances. All I want to do is be with her— not like this. My one is causing me this pain. All I feel is dread and I long for a time in which this dystopia could end. All I want to say is, 'I love you.'

I see her, her waxen body, as she takes off more and more latest, her belly, then her breasts exposed, all those wonderful parts I'd long dreamt about, now the images of Hell on Earth.

How can I refuse? I love her so much. But I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this at all.

I can feel it.

That endless, hellish rocking.

And that was it. There were no more words. If only I could have said it. If only I could have uttered such a simple words, and made my intention clear.

But my intention was clear. At no point – here I am saying all those lost nos for the first time – did I suggest I wanted sex. At no point did I give her the right to do what she did.

Why that word? Why does it need to be no or yes? Why can't people see what is really happening? Can people not understand beyond mere words? Is there nothing more to life than what is plainly spoken? Is there no way

And how could consent ever be assumed? How could anybody believe the refusal to say the word no is the same as crying out yes?

In spite of all the evident denial – in spite of 'I don't feel like doing anything more. I just want to be here', people so desperately need that one word. No. Why is it no? Why are the other words of no value? Why do emotions and body language not come into it?

I suppose it must be because body language is too easily read. But, still, there was clear body language. Or, at least, I imagine so. I have no idea what I looked like. There is no part of my mind which has any recollection

All I remember is that I did not want to have sex, and that the one person I trusted forced that upon me.

'I ask you a third time,' Rideau asked for a third time; in the twisted unrealities of my mind, I imagine that to be some sort of a badly timed and intentionally misplaced joke, 'did you say no?'

'No,' is all I can say in response; finally the word comes to me; perhaps this is the first time I have said 'no' in a long time; perhaps I hadn't said it since before I met Donna; perhaps the fleeting happiness she brought me prevented me ever needing to say it, and the hopeless despair of that night that night that night took the word from my life indefinitely; I had not, until this very moment, been keeping track of my use of that word; I had never considered it to matter; consent is defined; there are no blurred lines when it comes to rape, despite what the liars who run the world of corrupt rules and twisted control may wish to tell the populace; sex is never owed; sex is never given; sex is not a gift or a prize; sex is, to me, the ultimate expression of love; and yet, however much I may have loved or perhaps may still love the woman opposite me in this wretched court room, there was no desire nor any demand for sex; we were deeply in love, and that was all the depth I needed; sex may be the goal for some people, but for people in love, the ultimate aim of perfect existence has already been attained.

After every tragedy, the victims try to cope. However they achieve it, the aim is to make it past the vicious memory.

After the attacks of September 11th 2001, the American art world flourished. Everybody was doing their best to contort the brutality into something good.

A lot of comedy came from that day; in such a dark time, people desperately needed to laugh at something.

Of course, nobody is suggesting that makes up for it. Nobody is for one minute supposing that the September 11th attacks were okay because they brought comedy. But that comedy brought so much much-needed joy to so many people. It is the nature of humanity that we can never let a tragedy just be a tragedy.

Of course, there were a lot of negative outcomes of the attacks. The invasion of Iraq; the emergence of neo-Nazi cults; the distrust of anyone of Middle Eastern descent by the societies of Europe and North America. But the attack resulted in unity and passion which was desperately needed in American society.

The horrendous events of World War II led to a number of creations. From the National Health Service to the European Union, there were so many attempts to help people. These were not formed out of spite, but out of development. Not from aggression, but with the understanding that aggression and division caused the war in the first place. By working beyond the negative experiences, people learnt to cope.

That's what humans always need to do. It is impossible to change the past, but the future should always be shaped in a way to avoid repeating the past.

Out of my experiences, I needed to find a way to cope. If only something had been gained from it. If only there were some small ray of hope which had been gained from the horror. It would never have been good. It wouldn't be worthwhile. But there might just have been a way to cope.

The first time I went to Mandy's house, I couldn't help grinning. Her house had the most vibrant, colourful interior of anywhere I'd ever been.

There were soothing pastel tones on canvases placed around the lounge; the walls were bright explosions of vibrant patterns, dashed all over with emotional intensity; zig-zags zigged and zagged into curves and spirals; fire orange turned to maroon, and blended its way towards tope; this melted to magenta and cyan; before I knew it, I had fully rotated to examine every surface of the room; the only conclusion I could reach was that which artist had created this masterpiece had intentionally confused the purpose of a canvas and a wall, instead painting as expected but on the opposite media; I wondered why people didn't always decorate their houses this way.

As I was examining a selection of carefully placed coffee table books – which upon closer inspection turned out to be intricately rebound journals of astrobiology and speculative zoology – I noticed that Mandy was watching my movements.

'It's a lovely house you've got here,' I commented.

'Is it?'

'It's so colourful.'

Mandy looked around in the same manner I had, as though she were also seeing the place for the first time. 'It's a long time since I noticed colour. Since... I'd best not mention it.'

'You can mention it if you want.'

'We had a ban.'

'We can get rid of the ban if you need. Temporarily lift the curfew.'

'I was just going to say,' Mandy said, 'that ever since that night, everything's just seemed to be black and white.' She paused, and I was prevented from agreeing with her by the unmentioned return of the curfew of talk of abuse. 'I'm glad you like the place. Art needs to be appreciated, otherwise it goes into hibernation.'

'Yeah, it's wonderful. Who decorated it? It looks like it must have been an expert in interior design, and I was wondering what they were doing in Fichleke.'

'I painted this whole place.'

I gazed at her with genuine surprise and admiration. 'I never knew that interested you.'

'It's a hobby.'

'You could make a career from it.'

'How?'

'I don't know. But I'll do whatever I can to help.'

A smile spread across her face; she looked as though she was out her depth; there was an uncontrolled revelation of true affection. 'You're very kind.'

'Honestly, you could offer to paint people's houses. Even if it started as just a hobby, you'd be able to build a reputation as a beautiful artist.'

'I like the idea. But I wouldn't know how to feel about painting strangers' houses.'

'I could come with you if that made you feel better. Or we could do it while people were on holiday. They'd come back from a sunny, touristy place to discover even more beauty was present in the English Midlands.'

We talked in this manner for hours which seemed like months. We moved on from the interior decorations to philosophy and psychology and poetry.

'Do you have a favourite poem?' I asked. 'So few people do.'

'I do, actually. It took be a very long time to consider it, but I eventually came to a conclusion.'

'It's good that you put thought into it.'

'I've known for a long time that Yeats is my favourite poet, but it was ages before I could pick which of his was the best. There were a few I liked, but eventually I had to sit

I smiled with sincere admirations. 'I'm impressed. I'm not sure there are any writers where I've gone through their complete works.'

'Really? Oh, you absolutely should. It gives you so much more depth. There's so much context and appreciation for precise word choices and the range of topics if you've read through everything a writer has chosen to put out there: especially if you read it all in order. That's what I did with Yeats.'

'And what was your conclusion? Which poem is his best?'

She sighed a happy sigh, which wasn't a sound I had heard in some time. Without introduction – any form of which would have been irrelevant and distracting anyway – she began to recite: 'When you are old and grey and full of sleep...'

I nearly cried, and wished I had, for her presentation had been so beautiful. Every inflection had evidently been chosen after years of reflection; or, at least, she gave the remarkable impression that it had.

'How many loved your moments of glad grace?' she asked with conviction, as though the words were her own and not Yeats's – and in repeating them, the words became hers. 'And loved your beauty with love false or true?'

'But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,' I joined in, unable to help myself; she looked so happy to know that we were both experiencing the same pleasure in reciting the work in tandem. 'And loved the sorrows of your changing face.'

The day finally arrived that Donna was prosecuted and I felt colder than I ever had before.

The dream in my mind was that everything would be perfect with this finalisation, which I assumed to be justice. Instead, all that happened was that I watched the love of my life being taken away to a prison cell to serve an unreasonably short sentence.

What more can be said? There was no relief, no satisfaction, just multiplying layers of pain. I began to question if justice could ever really exist. Was this simply about revenge? I looked at Gallimard as he stood up and started to pack his notes back up into a folder. He had a smug expression on his face, which I knew had everything to do with him having won the case and nothing to do with my life.

I considered whether or not it would have been better to move away. The pavement judges me, so the whole of Fichleke is tainted. She could have stayed here and found a man who would make love to her as she desired, and I could have easily found a better place to live.

At the same time, I knew that would never work. Wherever I went, I would always be troubled by the presence of my mind.

'Are you happy?' I had asked myself this question every single day since my happiness died. I hoped it would be reborn; resurrected as an emotion of Lazarus. This time, however, the words were coming from Mister Gallimard's mouth.

'No. I haven't been happy in a long time, and I don't know if I'll ever be happy again. This court case changes nothing.'

My lawyer looked at me with the expression I had not seen since

seen since

seen

I had not

I had not seen this look—

My lawyer

My lawyer looked at me with the expression

Last night, with many cares & toils oppress'd/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest—

that I had not seen since that night.

that night

that night.

I had not seen his look since it was the look on Donna's face that night back when she was my Donna.

That night.

That night.

The night I was raped.

The night my turmoil was conceived.

And all he had to say was, 'If only you'd said no earlier, none of this would have happened.'

Dream of the Soft Look

Alligator

The last time I saw Mr Gallimard, it was just before I was scheduled to have a counselling appointment. He had turned up to discuss my reaction to the conclusion of the court case and ask if anything ('Other than the obvious') was wrong with me. I was sat in the counsellor's room, while they were arguing on the other side of a nearly closed door. They thought they were talking behind my back, but I heard every word they said.

'I don't know why he can't be happy. Donna is gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Isn't that what they say?'

'Unfortunately your hypothesis isn't substantiated in any psychological research,' my counsellor informed him.

'Oh, who cares about your psycho stuff? I got results. I did the best job I'd ever done. Why can't he be happy? Isn't that the goal? Everybody wants to be happy.'

'For Steve it's not so easy. He's gone through a very traumatic experience. His recovery won't be easy.'

'But it's over now.'

'That's not all there is to it. Steven suffers feelings of loss from what he perceived to be the greatest relationship of his life.'

'But we've proved otherwise. I've just spent weeks arguing it wasn't all that great.'

'That doesn't mean he's been able to let go. Although it will be hard work for him to make connections,' said my therapist, 'he needs people to devote as much caring to as he wants to impart upon Donna.'

'She bleeding raped him!'

'Steven is in the process of accepting what's happened to him,' said the councillor. 'He is only just getting to grips with Donna no longer being a part of his life. What happens now is only the early stage of his recovery.'

I would not know what to say, even if I were given a voice. I had spent so much of my life in that dreadful court that I neglected to think about the rest of my life. It dawned on me now that I had no passions. I needed a hobby. I needed more than that – I was searching for meaning. I needed people who I cared about and who cared about me. I had not found that amongst the self-serving lawyers or the clinically distant counsellors. I needed someone with passions just like mine.

I got in touch with Mandy again and she agreed to spend more time with me. I thought this was the best solution. I felt increasingly isolated in the world and knew she was the only person I could connect with well enough to spend long periods of time with.

Anyone else made me feel uncomfortable if I tried to act normally; there was no way for me to be perfect and normal anymore; but Mandy knew my history and I knew hers; we didn't care where we'd been, we only cared where we were going.

As for where it was we were going, I had no idea, and that was incredibly exciting.

The idea of a person I could love and cherish with all the boundless love I had left to live made me weep as much as my other problems.

In my mind – the only place I now felt safe – I was walking around with Mandy in tow. My companion is able to hold my hand as she slowly steps in line with me, eyes dashing around the landscape, absorbing the beauty of nature and telling me the uncluttered, uncorrupted truths that only an artist can observe.

An

Mr Gallimard advised that I take a few days to relax by myself. I told him that I didn't understand what he meant. He sighed in the way the therapist had advised him not to sigh, and I could tell he rolled his eyes.

'What it means,' he explained, 'is that the court may reconvene if Donna chooses to appeal.'

My connection with Mr Gallimard now existed entirely over the phone. I was perfectly happy for this to remain the case, since he had done little to help me in the time we had been in court, but had gone some way towards furthering his career. I told him I was happy to lie around and he allowed me to do so.

A few hours later, my therapist came by. His name was Mr Redbind. He told me I was not allowed to lie in bed all day. I thought this was rather unfair.

'It's not healthy to spend all your time indoors. Particularly not when you're horribly depressed.'

I did quite helpfully point out that I was viewing the carpet in manifold ways hitherto unexplored by any residents of this accommodation.

He told me to stop leaning over the side of my bed. He explained that the rush of blood to my brain was definitely not what I needed right now. I informed him that a therapist was not what I needed right now.

He said that was not strictly true, but that Misters Gallimard and Redbind would be more than co-operative in taking a backseat role in my treatment for a short while, should it help my coming to terms with abuse.

I told him that that would be okay.

'Perhaps it would be helpful if I joined you for a trip outdoors,' suggested Mr Redbind. 'Where have you been thinking about recently? Is there anywhere nearby which would provide comfort to you?'

I searched my brain for the moments of happiness. There were none. When Donna was in my life, that happiness overshone everything, and when Donna harmed me, she wiped my mind of all passion.

Now I was left an empty shell of half-silhouettes of old memories, without even the knowledge of whether those events they coyly hint at were themselves happy or sad or something inbetween when they really took place.

I remembered that I had wanted to go to the zoo; I wanted to look through the fences, and down into enclosures, and out onto fields, and love all the animals I can see; I could adore the sight of each and every living being grazing at the plant life around; and I fantasised about how much I'd love to see donkeys and remember that not everyone has to be bright to be beautiful.

I remembered that moment. It was the nearest I had ever come to thinking about happiness.

'I'd like to go to the zoo.'

This came as a shock to Mr Redbind, but he accepted and approved of it.

Of

We went to the zoo. Dr Redbind agreed to accompany me, and he said there was some concern that an event in the open public might trigger a reaction in me that I would be unable to control. I said I didn't believe that and he said nothing.

He drove me to the nearest zoo, and clinically walked me around the exhibits, each of which brought me some pleasure with a tinge of unexplainable anguish. Redbind looked on almost distastefully at the wonders of nature, as though he had seen them so often they were a bore, or else that he had no interest in anything other than getting inside the minds of his patients.

I asked him if anyone else had asked to go to the zoo, and he said that patient confidentiality prevented him from talking to me about other people he had treated and what their interests might be.

'Even if it helps me cope with my struggle?' I asked. 'If it helps me to know whether or not there are others like me, can you still not tell me?'

'Even then I can't say a word.'

I thought about Mandy, and what it would be like if she were here with me instead. She's a great friend, and I wanted ehr rather than this stranger to guide me.

I wondered if I should mention Mandy to the doctor, but I knew I would immediately regret it. Mandy was something good and honest, and I didn't want her mixed up with this foul world. I wondered, too, if I had an idealised and impossible version of her in my mind.

On the trek around the zoo, Dr Redbind and I ended up watching the alligators. I saw them, in a sort of pit with a mixture of water and dirt; dozens of gawping faces looking listly down upon them.

I felt no grievances for the alligator in the cage. After all, he is at no harm and does no harm. He is proved with all the essentials and catered to beyond. He – if indeed he is a he – is in no cage, but kept safe from me. I am in the cage that is the rest of the world, trapped and hurt.

I wanted to love the alligator. I wanted to feel free and fearless in my own mind. But then I saw a truly horrific sight. A keeper threw a slab of meat to the beast. And without a moment's thought, the alligator remorselessly ripped it to shreds.

That endless, hellish rocking.

I was stuck fast, watching the deterioration of the dead. The alligator's uncompromising jaw, dragging the meat down and down into the water. No hope for forgiveness. There was not even a corpse to remember the antelope by.

I felt fire in my mind, and I wanted to escape. I wanted to throw myself into the exhibit with them to see how they would react. Was I a friend or was I prey? Was there a difference?

I don't know if I blacked out or just screamed until my mind blanked it out, but I have little memory of what happened after that.

'You're not right in the head. And nor am I. And that's why I like you.'

That's what Mandy told me the next time I saw her. I told her that Dr Redbind had taken me home from the zoo immediately after whatever had happened by the alligators; he was still reluctant to relay to me what had taken place there.

We had just come out another meeting with the support group. I'd been wanting to catch up with her for a while, but hadn't had the confidence to arrange anything. We saw each other at the support group, and I felt more uncomfortable than ever.

I didn't like the place, and it felt cold and colourless. I didn't trust the people in there, and neglected to say anything all through the meeting. I left halfway through, and to my delight, Mandy followed. As we stood outside the community centre where the regular but infrequently attended sessions occurred, I looked at my companion to see the one beautiful sight in this forsaken town.

'I like you too, Mandy. I really need someone to spend time with.'

'I like that we can talk so openly,' she sighed. 'I've never felt this comfortable and free since... It's great to hear that we're both equally weird.'

'Yes, precisely.'

'But, at the same time, it would be so nice to be normal.'

'Would it?'

'Yes. To be a functioning member of the human race. Not to be afraid anymore.'

'I like that aspect. But is it really healthy to imitate someone normal rather than trying to comfortably be yourself?'

She thought about this. 'What do you want?' she asked. 'Do you want to be normal so you can judge the non-normal people, or do you want to be yourself, knowing you'll be judged by the so-called normal people?'

'I don't know. I just want people to treat each other with respect.'

'That's what we have to work towards. That's why we have things like the survivors' group. That's how we were able to start talking to each other; because we were free of judgement and at peace of mind. We know nobody there is going to hurt us.'

'I'm not going to go to that group any more.' I sighed, and her face twisted in confusion. 'I keep thinking... I keep thinking that maybe it was someone there who leaked my story to the press.'

'You can't keep thinking that.'

'But it's probably true. It took me so long to work myself up to a point where I could even consider going to one of those support grouped. I didn't tell my story to anyone else except the police and the courts.'

'Maybe someone on the jury told your story to the papers.'

'Maybe. But it could have easily been someone at the group. Why would a rape survivor treat someone like that whom they know is in the same boat?'

'I don't know. There are some vile people in the world.'

I sighed again. 'I just want people who have some basic respect for those who are suffering.'

'We do. The rest of us, at least. That one individual doesn't represent what we're like. Don't tar us all with the same brush.'

'I wouldn't dream of doing that.'

'Then come back to the group.'

'I don't want to. It's not going to help if I don't feel safe.'

I looked back at the building; the sludge that poured from the drainpipe had stained the outside; there were ghosts of posters advertising films and circuses which had occurred many eras earlier; I suspected the faint traces of clown faces on the wall did little to help the nerves of people attending any support group; the grey slabs wobbled with very little force, and there were flickers of blood on the floor from all the people who had tripped over the loose tiles; every building in this district of Fichleke had visible water damage from a flood a decade ago; nobody had the time or money to fix this problem.

'There's a separate group. One for male victims of rape. Maybe you'd feel safer there. It's a safe space.'

'I'm not afraid of women. I know there are still far more dangerous men. I wouldn't care who attacked me. The scarring thing is that it was someone I trusted.'

'Do you want to go to the men's group?'

'No. Thanks for the offer, but it's not for me. I hope other people get help that way, but it wouldn't work for me.'

'Okay.'

I sighed. 'Do you think it's worse to be raped by sometime you trust or by a stranger?'

'I don't think it's healthy to start ranking types of abuse. Some people are scarred more than others but we're all fighting common enemy: violence.'

'You're right.' I smiled. My lips cracked, because they weren't used to smiling.

The moment finally arrived that we had both been waiting an inconceivably long time for. Mandy and I sat opposite each other as we took hearty bites from the shared quattro formaggi pizza.

'Thank you,' I said softly.

'It's no problem,' Mandy said back. 'I really like you and this feels right. I've never felt more comfortable. I mean that sincerely. Well, I think it's a fact, but maybe I felt more comfortable when I was younger, but I can't remember that long ago.'

'It's certainly been a whirlwind.' I flicked back through my recent memories, and now all I could see was visions of Mandy. She had been such a great comfort to me these months, in spite of everything else that had happened; I was dimly aware of all the negative memories piled up in the back of my mind; but there was no need to focus on them; I had something better; I had a true friend.

And that was why this was our first date. It all made sense, since we couldn't be better suited for each other. It had admittedly taken too long for me to ask, but I wondered if it had been necessary to take so long in order to reach a point where this date was achievable.

But, all the time we sat together, there was a certain discomfort threading through the whole conversation. I don't know where it had come from, since I was so at ease. I supposed it was simply because I hadn't even considered going on a date since that night.

'All the cheeses blend together so perfectly, don't you find?' Mandy asked with delight. 'I always try to work out which is my favourite, but I never can distinguish.'

I let out a slight but melodic hum as I considered this. 'I know exactly what you mean.'

'Which cheeses is it, then? There's definitely mozzarella.'

'Most cheeses have mozzarella. It's the base cheese for southern Italian cooking.'

'I'm guessing there's also Stracchino in there.' She took another bite to taste. 'Yeah, that's the distinct taste of Stracchino.'

'Is there parmesan in there?' I considered.

'There can't be. This pizza was listed as vegetarian on the menu. Parmesan contains rennet, which comes from enzymes in animal stomachs.'

'Delightful,' I muttered sarcastically, to which the corners of her mouth turned upwards. 'It might be a rennet-free Parmesan.'

'It could be similar, but not precisely Parmesan. No cheese is Europe is officially sold as parmesan, anyway. It confuses a lot of people. Since that variety of cheese is from a protected designation of origin, it can only be made in Parma and Reggio Emilia, plus a couple of smaller locations.'

'Wow. You really know your cheese.'

'Thank you. I try to pay close attention to the great details in life.'

'That's good.'

'If it's not genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano, it's generally labelled as just Italian hard cheese. It's a catch-all term for cheeses like this, many of which don't contain rennet.'

'It certainly tastes like Parmesan. Sorry – Parmigiano-Reggiano.'

'It's probably a substitute. I can also taste some goats' cheese in there.'

'French or Welsh.'

'Now there you've stumped me. I might know my protected designations of origin, but I can't quite determine the difference in taste between the produce of Welsh or French goats.'

'Now, I can.'

'Really?'

'Well... Possibly.'

'Go on.'

'I've tasted a lot of goats' cheese. I think this is Pantysgawn.'

'That's a good one. Served to the Queen.'

'Indeed.'

'Yet it still sounds like the setup for a pun.'

We both laughed for some time, and for once I felt free; the pleasure of laugh stretch out for so long, I eventually had to quell my own enjoyment to avoid the risk of sounding mocking.

For a few moments we sat soundlessly, doing nothing but looking into each other's eyes. Then the uncertainty came back. Something was definitely wrong, but I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

'Why are you here on this date?' I asked. Mandy was somewhat taken aback, so I clarified: 'I don't mean that as an insult; I'm just curious.'

'I'm here because I think we get on really well together. Don't you?'

'Of course I do.'

'It's not a problem, is it?'

'I'm just not quite sure we're doing the right thing.'

'How do you mean? We're both good people. Neither of us is doing anything wrong.'

'I just wonder what we're doing on a date. It doesn't feel right. It feels forced.'

'My friend John did it,' Mandy told me, and it took me a moment to realise that she was referring to the fictional ability to solve one's emotional problems by plugging the gap with a romantic partner, 'and he said it worked a treat. Dating someone new. Solved all his worries.'

'I'm not so sure that works.'

'It worked for him.'

'So he says.'

'But he was dating a man, so it's a bit different.'

'As opposed to you.'

'As opposed to me.'

'You dating?'

'I'm dating you. Or I'm on a date with you.'

'Am I not a man?'

'That's not what I meant. You are a man.'

'Not according to the public.'

'Who cares what the public thinks?'

'Not me. I didn't think I cared. But that doesn't stop me being afraid. That's why I can't stand a mob mentality. People stop thinking when they have other people to do it for them.'

'You're so smart. That's why I think we should be a couple. We can get over the past together.'

'It's a lovely idea, I'm sure. But it wouldn't work for me.'

She looked upset.

'I really like you. But I think we could help each other out as friends.'

'Okay.'

Drag

I decided I was going to go through with it, after all. It wasn't so much a split-second decision, but neither had I planned ahead.

It was what the court would no doubt call 'a momentary lapse in judgement'. It wasn't a lapse in judgement to any degree. It was an opening of my eyes. And I use that image not in the sense of neo-Nazis, fascists and thugs declaring the supposed reality of a coup to extinguish the inevitable new world order – I use it to incur a message of peace, love and harmony. And the opening of my eyes was this: I saw the world for what it was; all the filth, all the bile; all the rapes going unnoticed and the babies dying without anyone ever finding out they lived. All the stories which make the news when they happen in Kensington but are not reported anywhere else. All the endless, boundless tears shed rightfully, but overshadowed with invisible clouds by all the infinite rivers of blood-red death which seeped from the eyes of the unseen.

It was at this moment, with my eyes so open I could not think for seeing, that I decided I was to kill myself.

I took the cheese knife from where it was cautiously stored in the kitchen draw. It seemed to me a good, kind, loving weapon; its smooth thin blade offered the instant ability to slice and slit through all my own flesh as I saw necessary, but the curved, jagged saw meant the cheese knife was perfect for hacking chunks of matter from the walls of my veins.

And, if I saw fit, the two prongs meant I could stick it into my eye and scoop out all I needed, or keep going until I reached and mangled my jelly brain and severed it in the middle.

I lay sprawled out on the floor of my bedroom, for I had sunk so low nowhere else seemed appropriate. I held the cheese knife to my wrist, ready to cut, for I am cheese, I am naught but a tasty snack for a superior mouth to consume. I used the standard blade of the knife to cut through my left arm, and (fittingly) it felt as soft and easy as edam.

They say humans have the automatic instinct against harm. They say the jaw is strong enough to bite through the finger like biting into a carrot, only we don't want to. I was thankful that this instinct within me was gone, and that I had no trouble in carving up my own flesh for whoever might find it. I considered biting my finger off just for the sake of it – a party story, if only I wasn't about to die – but there were more important parts of my body I wanted to cut to shreds first, and I didn't intend to stray from the schedule.

I enjoyed watching my hands move by themselves: one as it slowly and calmly made its way into a nearly dead corpse; the other as it spasmed and dropped with each nerve which found itself threatened and, as soon as it felt fear, it felt nothing.

I took great pleasure in the appearance of a rapidly disintegrating body, and in seeing the luscious geysers of crimson mucus spurt themselves up from beneath the crying skin.

As I continued dragging the approachable killer (maybe pacifier is the only suitable term for an item which enables the user to get whatever it wants, as calmly and non-judgmentally as possible) across my wrist, I remembered what I had once heard about how slitting your wrist sideways rarely kills; the blood clots too quickly to cause any real harm. Whether this was true or not I did not know, but I did not want to risk it and find myself coughing up intestines in a hospital bed, being patronised by those who claimed to have 'saved' me without providing any vyable alternative to mortality.

I curved the slit round, using the jagged edge to break through to new places, and scraped a new gaping trench into the battlefield which was now attached to my elbow.

As I felt the spicy sting of emotion for the first time since my sensory death, I began to fade. I blissfully departed this torturing world. My eyes fuzzed over in the most beautiful way. All focus departed and at last I was at peace.

Almost.

Then, I heard (or thought I heard) a noise as a gentle bump, the pressing of two objects together.

'Steve?' I heard. It was only a delicate whimper from centuries away.

Then the distant vibrations of footsteps thudding up the awfully familiar staircase.

'Jesus Christ.'

I thought this was an odd address, since I wasn't called Jesus Christ. Obviously my friend wasn't talking to me. I no longer needed to pay attention.

'Christ, what happened?' My ears took on a persona of being next door to a disco. I didn't mind. The disco was too loud anyway. All sound was but a vague memory, heard through a mile of pillows and a straw bed of forgotten regret. 'God, what do I do?' More thuds. I didn't know what was hitting what, nor did I care. My ears had nearly departed all the way, the lucky devils. My mind would be joining them shortly. 'IIIIIIm calllllin g gg g annanulantssss sss sss ss. N our! Styyyyy wuoouuthhh meeeeeee eee eee eee eee eee now steeeeeev.'

In my interim world, I was finally beginning to get to grips with harmony as my smooth, tadpole form was distorted and lifted from my primordial blood puddle and into the air, for whatever reason my new abuser intended.

A sound which would be piercing echoed through that lost shell I used to know as my physical home. 'Wow!' it said. 'Wow!' it repeated. 'Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!'

I was so content for those few moments. Those wonderful minutes of safe release from the holocaustic universe. I don't know why anyone would deprive me of that bliss. From what I heard later, I was thrown into the back of a vehicle which said, 'Wow!' in response to nothing. They 'saved my life', though I can't imagine what for and what on this wretched Earth they saved me to.

All I know is that I nearly made it to a better place; for even if nothing lies beyond it is surely better than life.

All I know is that my councillor came in and saw me lying there and decided that I needed removal from my own pleasant world.

All I know is that I was perfectly content that afternoon, when I lay there in a scarlet stain of my own life powers, with a grin on my face and a scar on my wrist – the deepest interrogation mark, asking the eternal question: why?

The

The – that simple, definitive article. The the which brings a conclusion to all events, all time and all thoughts is the solidifying word to terminate a trouble. To those who have never experienced a serious trauma, the word the will bear little significance beyond being one of the most commonly used words in the English language, and certainly the most commonly used in the paragraph I here write about the word the.

I am old and weary – not through time, though the court case dragged on for many months – through thought. The swirling emotions which drag me kicking and screaming back to the moment of abuse have plagued me for endless eternities.

Though I cannot say without serious delusion that I have recovered from what happened to me, I am certainly progressing. I no longer tremble at the thought of wandering the Earth of my own accord. I am beyond the point of forcing myself to cry to silence the screaming.

I read a lot. Reading takes the mind off the horrors of reality. Most times, the book will take the mind to another world of horror, but the fictionalisation of such extremes will invariably provide a comfort to a troubled mind.

There are too many bleak novels which occupy the minds of those lusting after pain. I have had my fair share of pain, and so spend my hours devoted to positive escapism.

As you may notice, my language has acquired that bizarre eloquence of an old writer. I take a great and much grateful pleasure from talking and writing in the manner of a Victorian gentleman. I have devoted myself to works of literature from before the World Wars. The shift in literature with the advent of modernism was certainly admirable, but it is not now for me.

Those horrid wars brought about so much badness into a frightful world that they have encouraged a trend of horror in fine art. I prefer the peaceful land before the terrors of Europe's destruction lead writers away from the model of art for art's sake, replacing it instead with the messy experimentation of the modern age.

In the 19th century, writers were for the most part blissfully unaware of world issues. They were almost unanimously toffs writing about the state of their manors, or over-educated Oxbridge boys keen to explore the lands of dragons, witches and heroes who never could exist.

Someday I will return to the real world. Someday I hope to be in a fit state to be horrified by world issues. Certainly there are unbelieveable levels of poverty and cruelty not just in the distant past, but also in the present day.

But I don't wish to think about these things. I feel like they are my problem. But feeling guilty about an issue I am in no position to combat is a scenario I have been warned against.

And I mean this is the most earnest manner possible: I simply cannot stretch my mind to think of the world's horrors. I was raped. Without victimising myself, it is clear I am a victim. However, I must – like the noble knights in so many Edwardian tales – set off on a quest to reclaim my pride and find not just the good-hearted nature in myself, but the power to look in a mirror and feel confident to be the man I am.

The Pilgrim Soul

Steve was an interesting man to live with. He had such a beautiful mind, but he kept it hidden away for far too long. Every time he opened his mouth, it was clear that the words had been contemplated for some time. The ideas fermented like fine wine, but I wondered what this process was doing to his brain.

He lingered for long periods in the house, looking at a spot on the wall or a misplaced book upon the shelf. I invariably asked him what he was thinking about in these moments, and the answer was always, 'Nothing.'

It was clear this was untrue, when after hours of contemplation he would look up curiously and make a claim or ask a question. These questions were varied and vast, ranging from '

The statements were even more interesting. They usually happened along the lines of, 'Some day it won't matter where the borders

When I probed him on this particular instance, his reply was, 'It will happen in Europe first. Europe is a long way ahead of other continents in its progress towards unity.'

I asked him further questions. Was this political? And was there a particular party which fit with his borderless vision? Had he read this in a book of philosophy? He then retreated back into another extended period of contemplation.

I felt slightly bad for making him feel self-conscious the way he evidently did, but I knew it was necessary to talk to him lest he fall into a deeper state of disillusionment. While other people suggested he was rude or antisocial, I knew that he felt more at peace when thinking beyond humanity. He rarely mentioned mortality, and when he did, he made it clear he didn't fear death.

'Are you feeling depressed, Steve?' I asked. I knew he had a history of suicide attempts.

'No,' he answered honestly. Perhaps it was because of my close connection with him, but I could tell when he was putting on a front and I could tell when he was being genuine. If he was feeling suicidal, he would have told me, even if he had to do so through veiled messages. This was one of the moments when he was neither ecstatic nor miserable. He was calm, and it was beautiful.

I opened my mouth to ask more about how he was feeling and he opened up before I had the chance to: 'I didn't fear death when I was suicidal, because I wanted to be dead. I don't fear death now, not because I want to be death, but because I know the universe exists beyond humanity.'

'Do you mean life after death?' I asked.

'No. I mean that the universe can be a wonderful place, regardless of who is living there. If humanity dies, the universe will go on. If humanity lives, the universe will be a better place with more understanding people.'

'What makes you think the universe will be more understanding in the future?'

He paused for a moment, and I wondered if he hadn't heard what I had said. Then he spoke delicately, 'In 1859, the British Empire and the United States of America went to war because a pig wandered into disputed territory.'

He failed to explain why that made him think the universe was a great place. 'Does the Pig War give you hope for humanity?'

'No shots were fired,' he added, almost as though I had said nothing. 'They threw only insults. Years before that, the war would have ended in many casualties. By the mid-19th century, that sort of conflict was bloodless.'

'Are there other examples of pig wars which are high in casualties?'

'No. But in the first half of the 20th century, Britain, France and Germany went to war with each other twice. It tore Europe apart.'

'I know,' I said. 'World War One and World War Two. Doesn't that suggest that the world is getting more violent?'

'World War One and World War Two,' he repeated mysteriously. 'But there was never a World War Three.'

'Some people would argue that the Cold War was in fact World War Three under a different name,' I said, allowing myself to be drawn into the intrigue.

'But it was never a real war. If the Cold War had turned hot it would have likely been nuclear,' he claimed. 'Does that count as a hasty generalisation?' All this time, he was idly sat by the bookcase, studying the spines of the history books he had bought and consumed. It would barely surprise me if the following day he recited the order and dates of publication of his entire library.

'I don't know if it's a hasty generalisation or not.'

Steve frowned. 'I need to work on learning my fallacies. Better still, I need to work on my arguing skills.'

'Why do you think the world will be so much better in the future?'

'It won't be perfect any time soon. But the notion of Britain, France and Germany going to war now is inconceivable. As bad as international relations might get, that would never happen.'

'But those countries still go to war in other parts of the world. The Middle East for example.'

'And maybe in a century from now, those wars in the Middle East will seem just as abstract as wars in western Europe seem now.'

I smiled. I liked his reasoning. 'Maybe.'

'In 1945, the idea of refugees and their descendants returning to Germany was unthinkable. Now people all around the world view Germany as one of the most developed and prosperous nations. Maybe within the next century we will see the same thing for all the countries seen negatively at the moment. Visit luxurious Iraq; take a tour of Syria; enjoy the beaches of Gaza. It could happen.'

'It certainly could. I hope it does happen.'

'Things will be better in the future.' Steve began to smile. He could be a sad man, but he had his moments of slight pleasure. 'That's why humankind doesn't matter. Some of us use our lives to advance civilisation, while others destroy life. But ultimately the world will be a better place in the future. And that's why I don't fear death. I don't long for the past, and I move towards the future whether I want to or not. We all do. When I ultimately die, the world will be a better place than when I was born. Who could ask for more than that?'

This, to me, was a major turning point. Such a gentle conversation, yet he had never opened up to me like that before. There were no tears. He was positive; more positive than I had seen anybody before. He had turned his situation around. From such a bleak past, he had found a hopeful future.

But that was not the first time I saw him happy. That is not to say that he was unhappy; I could clearly see a small pleasure in his hope for the advancement of civilisation. But it was at a later point that I first saw him truly, blissfully happy.

From that conversation, he began to open up more and more. We grew to be the best of friends, simply because we both knew we could confide in each other. He was more open and understanding with me, and I likewise bettered myself by holding back from forcing conversation upon The sign of any good relationship is that nobody feels forced into speaking; conversation either happens or else the people remain in a contented silence.

Of course, it was not every day that we had deep conversations like these. There were, as ever, days when we barely spoke at all.

One day, he woke up early and appeared somewhat excitable. As soon as I noticed he was eagerly anticipating something, I asked him what was up.

'Can we go to the zoo?' he asked.

'Er, sure, I guess.'

He went and immediately got dressed, and I hurriedly prepared myself after realising he was keen to leave the house as soon as possible.

We made our way to the nearest zoo, and upon arrival he listed to me around the exhibits in order of the animals' estimated date of discovery, explaining in fine detail the history of the species' evolution, and the Latin names and how they related to the animal's perceived origin. He guided the way through the zoo in reverse-alphabetic order, which he assured me was the most exciting way to explore the place; we started, of course, with the zebras, which Steve believed to be rather plain. I suspected that was a pun he had spent some moments working on.

'The taxonomic title is giraffa camelopardis,' Steve explained as he watched the giraffes lift their collosal necks to eat from what he assured me were umbrella thorn acacias. 'This derives from the Ancient Greek belief that they were a combination of a camel and a leopard.'

I was enjoying watching his bliss of unleashing his vast knowledge of the animal kingdom. But he stopped and a strange glaze came over his face when he reached the alligators.

He looked down into the pit where they were to be found, and I wondered for a moment if he had had a bad experience with these creatures before.

Suddenly, a smile spread across his face like lightning cracking in a storm.

'They're beautiful!' he exclaimed, and a few members of the crowd turned around and smiled at his delight.

He insisted to me over and over his these were the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen. The magnificence of how they could respond to any environment, and blend between being sloth-like and agile in a scaly heartbeat overwhelmed him.

Finally, when I thought it was about time to go, and that Steve must surely be sick of the alligators, I asked if he was ready to leave. Certainly this amount of devotion to the one animal must become a drag.

Then he turned to me, and spoke more softly than any voice I had ever heard. In this innocent declaration of aghast child, he said one sentence then became silent once more.

'I met the love of my life today.'

