blinkandrevile

[blinkandrevile]

I meet my doppelganger by chance when I'm on my way back from therapy. The clinic is in the middle of the city, so it's only about fifteen minutes away by bus and the buildings around it are relatively fancy. The waiting room is a mishmash of businesslike types who're clearly there because it's right next to their offices, and people like me who are broke and can't afford to pay full price for a doctor so we go to the doctors that bulk bill and try our best to get decent medical treatment out of it. The therapist there doesn't bulk bill, but if you get a doctor's referral she only charges $40 each for six sessions. We've discussed a recent diagnosis, but before I could really get into how it's been affecting me it's 11:30 and I'm gently ushered out of the hall. I hear her talking to her next patient as she leads them back through. I pay my $40 and I wish I had enough money to get food. I leave and head back through the city to the bus station. I can see someone walking up the path in my direction. I'm surprised how much he looks like me. He looks surprised too. He's several meters away by the time I realize that we're the same.

He's in a button-down and slacks. Under his expression of surprise is one of permanent stress and exhaustion etched into his face. What surprises me is that he's as big as I am, round-faced with thick limbs. I feel guilty for noticing it. I feel guilty for being that way. I can see on his face that he feels guilty, too.

Our paths aren't diverging. I have to go to the bus station. I want to go home. He's got a coffee in his hand and he looks like he wants to get back to work. With opposite paths we're being pulled together and my heart races with nerves as he draws near. People talk a lot about what you'd do if you met your doppelganger. They tend either towards fucking or killing them, with some gentler types noting that they'd hug and befriend that mirror of the self. The possibilities flash through my mind as the distance between us closes begrudgingly, but all of them make me want to throw up, even the thought of talking to him. I don't want to see this, I realize, don't want to meet his eye when he gets close enough for me to see the colour of them. He drops his gaze a second before I drop mine and we push our bodies to opposite extremes of the sidewalk, my shoulder almost grazing against storefronts in my urgent need to stay clear of him. I don't see what he does but I can tell he's doing it. I can see the wide-eyed panic on his face before it glazes over into dissociation. I can feel it on mine. I'm glad I couldn't afford food. I'm not sure I would've eaten it. I think it might have gotten tainted.

I take the bus home and I'm relieved when I reach the normalcy of my bedroom. The dishes on the drawers are as comforting as always. It's too hot to be under the blankets but I crawl under anyway and I don't know what to do and I can't sleep and I wonder if he sleeps better than me and I play a game on my phone until I'm distracted enough to breathe again. As soon as I stop, I wonder if his dad's in jail and how much he eats and why he doesn't seem like he's disabled and I'm suddenly enraged that there might be a version of me out there that actually got a fighting chance at life and my stupid phone game stops working for me so I get up to make some bread. An hour later I've convinced myself that it was just psychosis rearing its ugly head again, and I resolve to talk to my boyfriend about it and what it might mean, and within a week I'm pretty much okay. I don't book another appointment with that therapist. It was my fifth session anyway. I know I won't have another $40 next week. The electricity bill's coming in soon. You have to have priorities.

It gets worse after a month. The avoidance starts to spread. It's another patch of the sprawling capital that I can't go. First it's just the area straight up from the bus station into the main CBD. Then I figure he must go shopping often there if he has a fancy desk job, so I start avoiding the shops. He probably has the same taste as me, so I keep the same clothes I've always had and hope this coming summer isn't too hot. I get on the bus to visit a friend one day and the two-minute stop in the station makes my skin crawl. On the trip back home I feel like I'm burning alive. I resent him for taking the city away from me. I'm struggling to leave the house. I live so close to the city. It's too close for comfort. I buy a plane ticket.

My boyfriend is understanding. He lives in another country, so as long as I have a reliable internet connection he moves where I move. In the airport, I don't feel as excited as I feel like I should. All of my trauma is anchoring me here, and I'm relieved to be getting out, but I feel like a dog on a chain. Still, it's better than staying. The flight doesn't take long. I'm comfortable. It stops off in Sydney, then we fly over the strait and land in the Hobart airport. Everything goes smoothly. I get off the plane and go to baggage collection.

There's someone there dressed like me, and I swear to god if it's that fucking guy again I am going to be absolutely humiliated. I squint at him - he hasn't seen me, I think - and sure enough, it's me again. He's wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It's a stupid shirt with a picture of a wolf on it. I don't own it, but god, I wish I did. It rules. I'm completely miserable about it. 

You can usually feel it when someone's watching you, and yeah, he feels it. He looks up from his phone and glances at me then does a double take, and it's incredibly embarrassing to see. I wonder if it's as embarrassing to see how shocked I am to see him. The chagrin on his face is making me want to scream. The baggage is moving so slowly. It's so slow. I rip my eyes from him and we pointedly avoid looking at each other while constantly shooting looks at each other to check if one of us has moved or done anything. I decide as soon as I see my baggage that this isn't going to work and I blow the rest of my savings on the soonest flight back to Perth that I can get. I ask my best friend if I can stay with them and they're confused but fine with it. I call my boyfriend and he's worried for me. I understand. Things are weird right now, but things with him are fine. I love him. I'm back home two days later and I sleep for 18 hours in my best friend's spare room. They live a little further out of the city. I'm comforted by that. I'm pretty sure my doppelganger is the kind of person to stay in Tasmania. Better prospects, I'd guess. That comforts me, too.

A year later, my boyfriend moves here to be with me, and we relocate about forty minutes north of the river. I don't know that my doppelganger thought I was going to stay in Tasmania and moved back here too, back to his career in architecture and what ends up being three dogs in his unit south of the river. We don't end up crossing paths. I don't need to go to the city anymore, and if I ever go further south than that, I'm always driving and I never happen to go exploring down there. I have everything I need. Several years pass.

I'm off to the shops. My husband is at work, and my freelance work isn't due for another week, so I figure I can have the day off. The small local supermarket that I grew up with has been converted into a gargantuan mall over the past thirty years. Whenever I walk through it I feel strange. The very middle of it is exactly the same; a heart of cream and turquoise with polished white linoleum floors. I remember how it echoed one Thursday night when I was fifteen and shopping for school shoes and I sang and yelled and laughed until I realized there were a few other stray shoppers and shut my mouth up very, very tight. It could never echo now. Even at 6am, the whole place is packed. I wouldn't come here, except that Lush has announced that one of my favourite soaps is being discontinued, and I want to go to the store here to stock up before it's gone forever.

I'm dismayed upon arrival to find that what once was a towering stack of yellow and gold marbled soap is now a nearly empty display. There's just one chunk of soap left, and it's relatively small. Probably won't last me more than a few months. My disappointment quickly makes way for relief as I dodge my way through swaths of excited teenagers to get into the store, making a beeline for the last of the soap. Hurrying and bumping people on my way, I finally get to the display. With a sigh of relief, I reach my hand out - but quickly draw it back as it brushes against the hand of another. He has a small white circle of a scar on his left thumb. I look up in alarm and my doppelganger stares astonished back at me. 

We look at each other for a very long time. Some teenage hand winds between us and takes its prize. I'm starting to become aware of the looks the staff members are giving us. The doppelganger is, too. His eyes are grey. I've seen that look before, when I catch myself in the mirror when I don't expect it. The whites of my eyes shine back at me like glossy eggshells. Both of us are as terrified as each other. It doesn't make it better.

The intense anxiety of the outside eyes upon us breaks the spell, and in an instant the both of us are marching shakily out of the store and in opposite directions. I'm heading out to my car. I don't know where he's going. I don't want to. All I know, all that can calm me right now, is that I could tell from his expression that this was not where he usually conducted his shopping trips. I knew what he'd wanted was the same as me. I wonder if his dad is dead. I leave the mall empty-handed.

I don't go to there anymore.

[blinkandrevile]

By Czeck writer Karel Čapek, inventor of the term ‘robot’ as well!

[blinkandrevile]

I saw a post talking about how Terry Pratchett only wrote 400 words a day, how that goal helped him write literally dozens of books before he died. So I reduced my own daily word goal. I went down from 1,000 to 200. With that 800-word wall taken down, I’ve been writing more. “I won’t get on tumblr/watch TV/draw/read until I hit my word goal” used to be something I said as self-restraint. And when I inevitably couldn’t cough up four pages in one sitting, I felt like garbage, and the pleasurable hobbies I had planned on felt like I was cheating myself when I just gave up. Now it’s something I say because I just have to finish this scene, just have to round out this conversation, can’t stop now, because I’m enjoying myself, I’m having an amazing time writing. Something that hasn’t been true of my original works since middle school. 

And sometimes I think, “Well, two hundred is technically less than four hundred.” And I have to stop myself, because - I am writing half as much as Terry Pratchett. Terry fucking Pratchett, who not only published regularly up until his death, but published books that were consistently good. 

And this has also been an immense help as a writer with ADHD, because I don’t feel bad when I take a break from writing - two hundred words works up quick, after all. If I take a break at 150, I have a whole day to write 50 more words, and I’ve rarely written less than 200 words and not felt the need to keep writing because I need to tie up a loose end anyways. 

Yes, sometimes, I do not produce a single thing worth keeping in those two hundred words. But it’s much easier to edit two hundred words of bad writing than it is to edit no writing at all.

[blinkandrevile]

Whatever it is, it glistens warmly under a deep grey sky, dangling fifty feet in the air with an indescribable air of grace and menace. Sodden shelters drip in silence as every living being cranes their neck with their eyes to the heavens and watches with rapt attention. Their hands are limp, motionless as a steady drizzle makes their skin slick. Some of their mouths are agape. All of them are standing. It breathes once. They breathe. It exhales. It leans. The yellow surface sinks to indigo. They are brought to their knees. The hole it makes brings the sky to its knees, too, and the crash it makes as the clouds hit the floor is not unlike a thousand needles dropped onto cold concrete. Indigo drips kindly into red. It smiles. The ground splits. It smiles wider, and the ground opens. They are on their feet and red. The clouds are in their hair. Benevolently, it lolls down to face them. They begin to walk. They begin to fall. It follows the bodies, idly swirling above its own gaping mouth to observe the descent. It is not dark. It is no longer cold. They fall hard on the smile's teeth, and they are no longer on their knees. There are no better ways to eat. The face is lifeless and the smile is full. The sky folds, neatly and quietly, back into itself. It swings backward, cautious, and red helps yellow back onto its feet, indigo reaching at its tail but ultimately falling away. The smile begins to heal. It glistens warmly. It moves.

[blinkandrevile]

lyric.txt

it's just a little too far-fetched something like me lying in your bed if i could get closer to you i'd probably still choose not to

i wouldn't be your angel unless it meant that you could only find me in a dream i wouldn't be your lover unless it meant that you would hurt me

//////

carpet full of maggots little eyes lead little hands astray twitching in my sleep promise me tomorrow we'll be friends until i speak again

nothing stings more than knowing that you're not worthy of saving from boys misbehaving the chill of the night and the failure to fight ALL I WANTED WAS SOMEONE TO SAVE ME FROM YOU

/////

gives me the shakes to think about touching you when you call me pet names i feel like i'm seizing

[blinkandrevile]

this is the end of all things, where i'm picking my teeth for traces of you and the light comes on in the middle of the night.

here is an alternate history: your hands, but with "the end of the world" written on them. this was the real armageddon. inside the bruises spelling out goodbye you found something untouched. but all we had was childhood. the blood of something young and the frantic flutter of a fearful heart. if it's fate, then it's fate. it's how it has to be. you hand me my apocalypse in palms split and steady. you tell me i'm unlovely and it's never the last time. and when hell rises to meet me, i believe it.

in the next life, when you meet my eye, tell me when it's over.

i want to walk home together.

[blinkandrevile]

so i’m gonna use this blog for fun and to post all my writing stuff bc i do it constantly but i never actually tend to PUT it anywhere and i wanna feel less shame about it and get more practice!!! if ur here i’ve probably told you about this blog so hi hi hi welcome to my writing house