Tinfoil Flowers and Stars

Escaping is the first step to freedom. I know that from the Cult. When I first got out the best place for me to come was Jessica’s. They wouldn’t find me here.

Jessica was the least likely person for me to be with, and she nearly didn’t let me stay. My welcome wasn’t exactly torchlight’s in the winter darkness; Jessica dressed as a nun, dishing out warm soup and sanctuary.

I had to rely on the city. My city to spew something up out of nothingness and it did. It was just a matter of waiting, playing.

I woke up crying. My eyes were drowning from the salty tears. I was tired, but there was no way I could sleep with them prising my marble eyes apart and escaping down my cheeks, like a chemical waterfall.

Jessica was up and tiding around me and giving me death looks like I was some type of parasitical growth. I wished she didn’t wear white pedal pushers and no knickers. The black mound of hair that she didn’t shave was clearly visible through the trousers. I wiped away more tears and looked at her. She held a black, shining bin bag and picked up cans. Throwing them in with a clanging force of demolition.

“They can’t find you here” she said and I thought she meant the cult
“Thank you” I said and cried some more.
“No. I mean the council. They can’t find you here. You need somewhere else to stay” and she emptied an overflowing ashtray into the bag.

Just behind my eyes, where hangovers form, I felt the city pulse. It was quiet. Just a little reminder that it was still there. Like recalling that you still had muscles, you still had bones.

“It wasn’t me”, I said to her when she sat on the sofa and turned on Jeremy Kyle “It was Bradley” and she ignored me. She lit a cigarette.
“I don’t care if it was the fucking Pope”, she said after a while and I picked my nose. “You should tidy yourself up”, she said. “Get a job.”

I began to cry again. This time it was a nasal cry. Snot and mucus crying rather than wistful water and tears crying. Jessica zipped up her white padded coat with the white fur around the white hood and slammed the door shut. She went to meet her mate Mary-with-the-baby.

I had to pull myself together. Stuff my emotions into Jessica’s bin bag and throw them out in the wheelie bin. It was about time I reassembled myself. I had to face another fucking day. Screw back on the prosthetic limbs and reattach my organs.

I found my black leggings from behind the sofa. I pulled out the dress whose hem was peeping out the suitcase, there was a brown jumper hidden somewhere around and I knew my filthy trainers were in the kitchen. I stole Jessica’s make up and used her hairbrush.

I made a cup of tea and watched it go cold. I cried some more and then put on mascara.

I flicked through Jessica’s things. Her books, her CD’s, her DVD’s. She had so many. I tried on all her perfumes and jewellery. I put them all back.

I made a bacon cob and I thought about going out. I rejected the idea as I scraped the cob into the bin.

I wondered why Jessica’s flat had a dado rail running around the tiny living room. I wanted to know why she had painted it lime green and peach. Why was her sofa pink? Why did she have stuff in frames from the pound shop? What was with the sea shells on the window sill?

I smoked two of her black market Turkish Marlboro’s. I used the butter as an ashtray.

I felt it again. I felt it pulse. Bigger this time. My veins stood out of the skin and then I shivered.

I was waiting. Waiting for Bradley. There was nothing he could be doing other than sleeping or making his way over here.

I found some tinfoil and some scissors.

When he arrived I had already begun my work. In a two-minute-frenzy had gathered up my stuff into the suitcase and backpack. I would ask him if I could stay. Best thing to do is keep moving.

Rolling stones gather…

“What in Gods name are you doing?” he asked after I had let him in and returned, almost hyperactively swooping into the living room. I sat on the peach-thin carpet with all of the tinfoil around me.

I was cutting out flowers.

Strange. When Bradley arrived it really felt like I knew what I was doing. It felt like the carpet was rubbing and scraping my skin, burning it off into red weeping sores. It really felt cold in here, Auschwitz-cold, Belsen-cold, toes-going-black-and-falling-off cold. It really smelt like smoke and meat and it really looked much better in here. That left me in a pulsing beat inside, behind my ears somewhere and I went back into being in my bubble, deaf almost and contained. A police siren faded into the distance.

The scabby track marks he’d tried to hide were beginning to run down his filthy hands. I handed him the scissors and drew out more tinfoil.

At the back of my brain it pulsed again and now it made me feel warm, false warming, like sipping brandy on a cold day. The sun was going down. The grey light was beginning.

“I can’t stay here” I said not looking at him. I was too interested in the flowers.
“Did Jessica chuck you out?” he asked and I shook my head
“No, but she’s going to.”
“Perhaps you should sleep with her?”
“I’d rather not.”

The streetlight began to glow lollypop and e-number orange from outside the window. The pulse was beginning to quicken. I closed my eyes and saw it.

A nucleus and tentacles. If you look carefully you can really see what the tentacles are.

Houses.

Rows and rows of houses with dead people inside, but they don’t know they’re dead.

Rolling stones…

I pasted the flowers all over the carpet, all over the wallpaper, all over the ceiling, all over the sofa and all over the TV.

…Gather no moss.

I took the tinfoil and scissors. I took the paste.

Bradley and I walked out into the night air. It smelt like bonfires. I didn’t shut the door to Jessica’s flat or turn the lights off. He took my backpack. I wheeled the case behind me like an annoying squeaking, toy and we walked.

We walked and walked and my legs began to hurt. We walked and walked and the wheel fell off my suitcase. We walked and walked and we went past pubs with dirty children playing in the entrance. We walked and walked past a flaming car and through a park.

It was really in me now. Every breath, every gulping mouthful. As heavy as breathing water.

I looked up at the sky and saw the point of the slide. It pointed up towards the half moon. There were no stars, just cloud.

“Do you ever think…?” I asked and then shut myself up
“What?”
“Do you ever wonder why? Why it’s all concrete and brick?”
“No.”
“I do. Where are the stars?”

We walked past the Spar and past the traffic lights. Past another pub with a piano player in the window and we got to Bradley’s house.

It stank. The middle of the first room had a big mound of rubbish in it. Newspapers, clothes, broken furniture, noodles, cutlery, empty containers, toys, carrier bags, cans, cigarette butts. I went straight upstairs and I got into Bradley’s bed.

I lay in the netted, pink blanket and pulled out my tinfoil, paste and scissors. I began to cut out stars.
Bradley followed me. He raised an eyebrow. I smiled.

“So…”
“So?”
“So you’ve not got it out of your system then?”
“I’ll never get it out of my system.”

So, so I started cutting them out. Making them. If God wouldn’t do it then I would. That’s what often got me into trouble. Ideas above my station.

The lampshade looked better. The walls looked better. The blinds looked better. Bradley didn’t help me this time. He just squinted at me through a haze of cannabis smoke.

“I hate the smell of that.”
“You’ll get used to it.”

The wardrobe looked better. The chair looked better. The floor looked better. He just squinted. He asked me if I minded and pulled a candle out of the draw.

I didn’t mind. Bradley could do whatever he liked. I stuck more stars over the floor.

“Don’t stick them on the bed”,
“Why not?”
“Where will we sleep?”
“Outside, under the stars”,
“There are no real stars, not tonight.”
“Under the flowers”,
“It’s just concrete out there.”
“Downstairs”,
“Just don’t put them on the bed”,
“Why?”
“They get in my way.”

I felt a bit homesick. I sat on the bed and hoped the room would stop spinning. I peeped through the gap between my fingers and watched Bradley hold the spoon over the candle.

“I had a dream once”
“Yeah?”
“It answered everything. Everything.”
“Yeah?”
“But when I woke up I’d forgotten.”

The city began to swirl. There were flowers and stars twinkling around it. It began to turn and spin round and round. It made a horrific noise, like metal screeching.

“Am I safe here?”
“Yeah. Nobody comes over. It’s too dirty.”

Flame, candle, spoon, brown, cotton ball, needle, tourniquet, arm, scabs, blood.

Penetration.

That was Bradley. He couldn’t see. He didn’t see the stars. He didn’t see the flowers. He didn’t suffer.

He didn’t see the city, the stone. He didn’t see anything. All he saw was his next hit.

He didn’t see the filth. Everything that was wrong.

And he didn’t care

And I was envious.

“Have you ever run away?”
“All the time”
“Have you ever stayed and seen the outcomes?”
“Never.”

And I wouldn’t want to. It interests me, but it terrifies me more. I need to go. It’s like a pressure begins to build up in my head. Right at the back, behind the ear. It builds up and swells like a purple balloon.

Then I knew! I could escape and escape and run and run but I’d still be here. I’d still be sat in the nucleus. The purple balloon would still be behind my ear.

It was so obvious.

Rolling stones…

And one day it will overflow. Burst, pop, explode.

And I know I’ll keep on running. I’ll keep on going. I need to stick to what I know, no matter how futile it might be. I’m really deceitful. Especially to myself.

Bradley is sick in the bin and I put a hand on his back. It’s not my hand. It’s cold and clammy and made of metal. It’s made out of foil. It looks like my hand, it has all the trademark scars and chipped nail polish, but looks can be deceiving.

“I’m fine, really, I’m good”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t believe me.”
“It because you’re a liar.”
“We’re all liars.”

Bradley goes white and lies down on the pillow. His eyes burn black in the sockets. He doesn’t close his eyes and it doesn’t sound like he’s breathing. He’s not looking at me although he stares in my direction. He doesn’t move. It’s like he’s asleep with his eyes open.

I gather up my things and walk out. This time I turn off the light. The foil stars twinkle in the street lamp.