danieldavidwriter

[danieldavidwriter]

Gateway

Nisha Drake stood on her balcony overlooking the city and took several deep breaths of air. It had been a long night and she really needed to straighten her head. There was always a good breeze up here, cool and clean, so she turned her face into it and flopped her head backwards to stare up into the brightening sky. She would leave today, she knew it.

The feeling had been growing inside her all week, unplanned and unexpected really, but she knew that today was the day she would go. A smile crossed her face, followed by a little laugh in her nose and a shrug of her shoulders that looked like a quiet sneeze, but was in fact a delicious burst of joy, relief, love and contentment. She spun on her heels and headed back inside, immediately kneeling down at the coffee table to scratch out another line as thick as a boot lace.

Nisha lent forwards over the drug smeared and cup strewn plastic table with a short black straw to snarl it up her nose. It stung as it clawed it’s way towards her brain in brambly clots, whilst the familiar acrid slime slid and gagged down the back of her throat, making her reach out to gulp down more warm champagne. Not the best gear in the world, more MDMA and aspirin than coke, but she liked the trashy, trippy hit it was giving and at this time in the morning anything would do. The sound of birds singing from the shadows drifted in through the balcony door, counterpointing her shame with their delicate trills and chirrups, as the first light of the day added a faint wash of colour to the greyscale streets outside.

As she massaged her nostrils to hurry the drug along on it’s journey into her blood, she felt her body prickle with anticipation and her spine judder and spasm a little deep inside the flesh of her neck. She glanced up at the guy chewing his lip expectantly opposite her. The magic was melting off him as the dawn light took hold, but she’d hoped he would stick around and here he was, looking jaded and day old like a party sandwich that was still essentially the same, but giving off clues that it should’ve been enjoyed 12 hours ago.

He was young and keen though. Full of the bravado every twenty-something first job guy had, and he had great tits. Great sirloin steak tits and broad, action-figure arms. Arms that she’d fantasised about more than once since she’d hired him and that undoubtedly made him more memorable than he should be. She obsessed endlessly over the pale and solid curve that burst out from his cotton sleeve, that fattened and stretched the fabric each time he picked up his drink or self-consciously cupped his chest. Her fingers could sense the tautness of his skin, daydream the weight of him as her hands cupped his chest and pushed up against him.

He’d worked for Nisha for two weeks already, but she still couldn’t remember his name. Nick? Ned? Nevin? It began with an N, she was sure of that, and it was his first job since graduating. A decent job as well. She was paying him way over the odds just for the sake of it. He probably had serious money in his account for the first time ever, a job that you almost couldn’t fuck up, and the effortless under-thirties looks that you don’t know you have until they’re gone. Not that that would ever happen to him, of course.

She carved out another line and gestured the straw towards him. She’d been here before, tediously role playing the crazy night crawler to build a temporary sense of camaraderie with some guy who most likely cared about her as little as she did. For the briefest moment she would feel less alone, before the daylight came back and a brutal despair rampaged into her mind with the vicious deprecation only a hard-earned comedown can generate.

He leant forwards to snort the gear and she took the moment to play with a curl of hair that fell from his fringe and danced like a seahorse in front of her. From there, she ran her hand across his cheekbone and down his neckline, over the broad, bulging muscle in his shoulder and down the vein in his arm, before jumping left to brush under the heavy curve of his chest. The music had stopped, although she hadn’t noticed at the time, and she heard his breath quicken a little and his nylon t-shirt crackle under her fingers.

I feel like fucking - she said.

Since the Gates of Heaven had opened, every night went by like this.

Nobody that was still here really cared anymore. Nobody had anything to lose, so the ritual of determined debauchery and oblivion had become the afterwork activity of choice, whilst afterwork was getting earlier and earlier every day. For Nisha, sometimes just sending an email over breakfast meant the after work fun could begin all over again.

Of the people who remained, some were squeezing the last few drops from their physicality before going upstairs, others were exploring ever darker corners of their imagination, whilst some - like Nisha - were exploiting the situation and making huge amounts of money. She didn’t need it anymore of course, she could leave whenever she wanted to, but this was the first time in her life that she’d had an idea that actually made money. Real money. More money than she’d ever imagined. After years of mediocre businesses that seemed cool enough, but in reality just about scraped along - working 70 hour weeks but earning half as much as her friends; travelling on business trips but only ever economy; pitching at investment events that felt like begging but with slides and artisan coffee - this business was next level. She only had to do about one hours work a day, and even that was really just checking that the server was switched on. After that, the money kept rolling in.

Nisha had created an app called Gateway. Gateway monitored local weather stations for the changes in air pressure that always preceded the Gates opening. The geolocation in your phone would tell you if you could get there in time, and through a few links to transport services it would even tell you the best route to take. Simple really, but she’d made twenty million in the first two weeks, and every single day since then her bank account had filled back up as fast as she could empty it.

She’d never felt the energy of a good idea working well before. A winner! An indisputable, surefire, class A hit. Gateway was the sort of thing that people wrote about in Forbes magazine, or shared motivational stories about on LinkedIn. In any other time she would’ve had investors crawling all over her, offering crazy sums for a piece of the action. She’d have been featured in one of those nauseating ‘top females under thirty’ lists, giving talks on women in tech and proclaiming how ‘anyone can do it if they believe in themselves’. But not in this time.

This time no one cared about her future plans or market share, her growth curve or exit strategy. They all used Gateway just once, to get out and never look back. The irony rubbed, but she forced it out of her mind, focused on the here and now and each night drank, snorted and fucked the tragedy of her hopeless success out of her mind.

Besides, she had told herself she wouldn’t leave until she was ready. Things were getting more fucked up the longer she stayed, and she had kind of like it. It was messy, exciting and very cinematic.

Nick or Ned or whoever it was, looked up at her as he inhaled his line and tried to look shocked by Nisha’s bluntness, but as he straightened back up his face confessed that he gave as little of a shit as she did, and he smiled a wasted and disinterested smile as he brushed a few crumbs from the stubble on his top lip.

Sure, why not - his voice croaked as the coke brought him to the edge of a sneeze.

He squeezed his nostrils and held his breath before moving up to kiss her, the stale smell of champagne advancing towards her in hot blows. His lips felt surprisingly soft and warm and in the brief moment that she was lost in their tenderness, Nisha felt a lump appear unexpectedly in her throat as a great wave of sorrow and loss, swelled and broke in her chest. Was she going to cry? In a panic, she flipped it. Flipped it to anger and pushed him backwards with her mouth, rising up from her knees and biting on his lip until he recoiled, sliding awkwardly off his chair. His body twisted underneath her onto the floor and his legs buckled up behind him like a corpse.

She stopped for a moment and raised herself up to look at him, her back arched and her arms locked solid.

Want some viagra?

No - he sounded shy all of a sudden, so young - I’m ok, thank you.

In heaven, Marlon was watching. He watched her often because he still loved her despite everything. He loved her even though he had to keep reminding himself that this person, this stranger who drank and snorted and fucked away every day and all of their memories, was not the same Nisha that he knew. This was another Nisha, born out of this extremely fucked up situation. She was confused, surely. Frightened, maybe. Lost? Stressed? Traumatised? Maybe a little bit of all of these things, but it didn’t matter. He knew who she really was, and that she could still be saved.

***

For Marlon, everything was wrong. Every day and every moment.

This wasn’t how it was meant to be. They’d walked to the Gates together hand in hand. They’d thrown a party the night before, to celebrate going up. She’d told him that she was giving Gateway away, making it open source so anybody could use it. She’d told him that they would be in heaven together, with no more work and no more stress. No more problems and no more stupid mistakes. But it was all a lie.

He often day-dreamed back to their leaving party, when their remaining friends had piled into their new apartment and drunk shots and jumped around wildly to Rage Against the Machine and Sum41. Lampshades were broken and drinks were spilled on their beautiful carpet, but this new life of theirs was so fresh and unmade that there was precious little else to break. No pictures, no furniture, no best glasses, no sentimental objects. Somebody broke the arm on the Technics turntable, but since they weren’t using it nobody cared. It was still revolving silently the next morning when they left.

Most of their guests that night were much like their expensive new apartment. Picked up in the last few weeks they were still strange and unknown, a little empty perhaps, gorgeous but generic, and only theirs as a result of the money they now had. The money that came in so fast they didn’t know what to do with it all, apart from rent expensive flats, cheap friends and meaningless good times. Marlon could see the fakery now, he sort of knew it then, but it had still felt amazing.

They were a strange bunch, those still here.

The most moral and virtuous people had gone within the first week of the Gates opening, racing eagerly to get to the afterlife that their childhood had promised them. Whether raised on old testament brutality or glossy Sunday school pamphlets, whether they wore a cross or a hijab, carried a knife or rosary beads, now was their moment of truth and excited validation and there was no reason to delay.

Your average person went up a few weeks later, reassured by endless 24 hour news items and social media discussions that the Gates weren’t an alien trap or some kind of government conspiracy, and deciding that the chaos that was rapidly taking over the non-celestial world was now by far the worst option. A quick re-read of the bible, a few Wikipedia searches in case there was a quiz and they were gone. Delivered from evil, for ever and ever.

Others stayed back to do some good amongst the orphans and lost souls of the growing bloodshed, the refugees caught in the rising tide of revenge attacks and lustful tourism, but eventually even they left, electing to save themselves and leave the rest of the population to whatever personal fate they had chosen.

Those left behind now were fanatical non-believers, the guilty and guilt ridden, hoarders and mercenaries, those who cowered in the face of change and those for whom pain and pleasure and death were far more attractive than infinite paradise. How strange it was, that with the promise of unqualified salvation, the cruelty and deviance within even the gentlest soul had been awakened in a counter-reaction, that quickly spilled beyond even the most extreme moral boundaries.

Marlon could still feel the butterflies that danced in his belly for that whole night and into the morning when they left. On that day, the morning was fresh and clear. The crisp night air lingered in the shade, whilst the rising sun beat down on their bare skin as they began their purposeful but apprehensive walk to the Gates.

They were both in T-shirt’s and shorts, hand in hand, enjoying what might be their last touch. Perhaps this was the last warm breeze to ruffle through the soft hairs on their arms, or the last rays of sunlight to warm their heads and shoulders.

Nisha had her phone out with Gateway open, calling out directions every once in a while as the app wound them through alleyways and parks. They passed a supermarket with every one of it’s windows broken. Apples and wine bottles lay amongst the broken glass, a burnt out SUV with a ‘Jesus loves you’ sticker sent thin trails of black smoke into the calm air as it smouldered, and bodies lay crumpled on the ground in the shadow of a tower block - an increasingly common sight. A couple holding hands over here, a child lying alone over there.

At one point they startled a dog that was scratching through rubbish, piled ten feet high against a wall in a school playground. It looked up with a start, blood dripping from the tin-can cuts on it’s jowls, before skittling off with it’s tail between it’s legs when Marlon stamped his feet.

Crossing a deserted junction, the faraway bass of the Neverending Rave, a 24 hour party that had been running non-stop since the first few appearances of the Gates, thudded gently to a lost melody before being cut off again the moment they turned the next corner.

Eventually, the familiar halo in the sky came in to view, first behind the skyline a few streets away and then rising high overhead. Nisha put her phone away and they both gazed up at the wonder that swirled overhead.

It was an awe inspiring sight. Gentle waves of colour danced about in the air and across every surface like mother of pearl, whilst a warm and constant breeze spun around and around in a huge circle of leaves and dust directly under the Gates. There was hardly any sound, a few hushed voices from the handful of other people standing around, but nothing more.

The strange calm reminded Marlon of his one and only sailing adventure. As a boy he and his father had set sail for France together, but in the dead off night the wind had failed and they spent hours bobbing vulnerable and hopeless in the dark. Hanging over the stern with his head resting on his arm and his finger tips trailing in the water, the cold black sea had slowly warmed into peach and rose ripples and eddies as the day brightened and the wind finally returned to them.

In the centre of the Gates, a bright white beam shone down like a search light and every now and then the softened silhouette of a new leaver raced up and away into the sky.

Marlon and Nisha walked in together, hearts pounding and their fingers digging tightly into each others palms. Marlon led the way and as he entered the light, he felt a roar of energy and incredible weightlessness that lifted his feet gently from the ground. He began to laugh and turned around to smile at Nisha next to him, but she wasn’t there. Her hand was stretched out as far as it would go whilst her feet remained firmly planted on grey pavement. He could barely see her face through the blinding light and had to twist his neck as far as it would go to keep her in view, as it slowly but inescapably turned him upside down. His hand gripped hers tightly now and his feet flapped wildly in the air. He held onto her as hard as he could, but he could feel her fingers wriggling and he was so stressed that his palms were sweating and he could feel her sliding out from his grip.

What’s wrong? - he yelled at her through the roaring.

Nisha! What’s wrong?

He couldn’t see her now. His eyes were streaming from the intensity of light and his inverted state made focussing almost impossible.

Sorry! - he heard her shout out through the wind, just once, before her hand finally slipped out from his and he flew up and away from her, tumbling like street litter in a storm.

And so, that was how this came to be. Another day of longing and anger and sadness, in this place that was meant to give the opposite of all those things.

Marlon felt uneasy about this contradiction. Had he done something wrong? There had been no pep talk when he arrived, no one to greet him or induct him into this new world. Had he missed it somehow? He’d gone back to where he arrived to check, but there didn’t seem to be anything special about the place. No door or desk, no greeters or receptionists or whatever you might expect to find on the other side of the Gates. It was much like every other place up here, a meadow on a warm day with a few people hanging around.

He felt guilty, disappointed even, that he seemed to have messed this up somehow. He spent his days with as good an impression of bliss on his face as he could conjure, whilst constantly thinking about Nisha, When he was sure he was alone, he would relax his face and guiltily watch her through the clouds, yawning his mouth to relieve the cramp of endless smirking.

He had no idea how he was meant to behave or feel. He slept on the ground, as that’s what everyone else seemed to do. He ate fruit from the trees and drank water from the pools that seemed to be everywhere. Too many, he had thought. All around him people strolled peacefully about or lay around in a state of bliss. They exchanged smiles but never spoke, they embraced but never kissed. They ate and drank and slept and he wondered enviously how they knew what they were supposed to be doing.

Every now and then he would hear the unmistakable sound of an angel flying overhead and hurriedly begin admiring a branch, or dreamily wafting his fingers in a nearby pool of water. He hadn’t met an angel yet, but their dark silhouettes soared overhead regularly, casting long shadows which cooled the ground and flattened the ripples on the water. Once, one had hovered overhead, it’s wing feathers twitching rapidly as it hung in the air almost motionless, before diving down with terrifying speed on the other side of an orchard. Marlon couldn’t see what happened, but he heard the most terrible shrieks and decided that it might be better if he never met one.

Nisha was sleeping now. He liked to watch her as she slept. He ignored the fact that she was partially clothed, that she was surrounded by empty bottles and detritus, that her phone had rung about a dozen times and she still hadn’t heard it. Instead he watched her face. It made small twitches and ticks as she slept, sometimes with the hint of a smile. Sometimes her lips moved almost imperceptibly as if she was whispering a secret. She had always done this and it told Marlon that, no matter what was happening now, the old Nisha was still there and she would come to him eventually.

A noise behind him made him start from his daydream and turn around abruptly. It was so instinctive that for a moment he forgot entirely where he was, or to imprint the bliss back onto his face.

There was a girl standing just a few feet from him. A young girl, maybe late teens or early twenties, in a blue pinafore dress with a buttercup hem that fluttered about her knees in the breeze. She had mud on her shoes and her hands picked at each other nervously.

He had no idea how long she’d been there. She stared expressionless directly at him, not in bliss, not in horror, just staring into his eyes, frozen in the moment. A moment which seemed to stretch on forever and made Marlon blink inexplicably several times. He kept expecting her to speak, but she never did and several moments passed when he wished he’d thought of the right thing to say and said it already.

As he decided that he simply must say something, anything, he noticed a tear had appeared like a pearl in her eye. It dropped out and ran fast down her cheek, etching a pale streak in her blushed skin. It was swiftly followed by another, and another, and before long her face and neck were wet with tears as they stared at each other in silence. Marlon felt sick as an understanding grew from nothing into everything inside of him, and the truth exploded out of both of them and crawled it’s way across the wilting grass and putrifying water.

***

Nisha woke to the sound of her phone buzzing on the coffee table next to her. Her eyelids peeled apart and the sunlight burst in to sting the surface of her eyes and cause a sharp pain in the nerves that tied them to her head. She was sweating. As she sat up her head pounded even more and she cradled it in her hands to soothe the pain and resist the sudden urge to throw up.

She swiped her phone awake and saw she had dozens of missed calls, all from Nick. She called him back.

Hey - she said, her voice still asleep.

Why are you calling, aren’t you here?

No, I left hours ago - he said - Have you just woken up?

No - she lied - why, what’s up?

Have you not seen Gateway? - he sounded freaked out.

Why, what’s up? - she said again, holding the phone at arms length and refocusing her eyes.

She swiped up and clicked on the Gateway icon as she searched around for a nearby glass of water. She found champagne.

When Gateway opened the map was going crazy. Little blue markers were all over the screen, so many that the route finder clearly wasn’t sure what to do and was conspicuously empty.

Wow - she said more quietly than she expected - We’ll have to fix that route finder bug later. How many are there?

Too many to count, - said Nick - but that’s not it.

Oh?

There was a pause.

They go down Nisha. Down.

Another pause.

What do we do?

[danieldavidwriter]

Chapter 2: I remember you, Emma Keswick

I remember you, Emma Keswick. I return to us often. The smell of drooping lavender bushes as we ambled through the park, your long fingers, our heartbeat. I remember how we talked about love and war, only some of which made any sense, and I remember how jealous we were of you, how set up you were and how your life was just waiting to be sketched out perfectly. I remember our stupidity and how you ran! We couldn’t stop laughing. We knew it was a terrible mistake, but couldn’t stop laughing anyway. I never found you here though. I’ve looked, although I couldn’t stay.

The old star-eaten blanket of the sky - oh how we rejoiced after we wrote this and how I waned when you were gone again. Smoking pipes and chewing beef in Flanders before we parted, with no time to tell you not to be afraid, that there are no good or bad endings, just the same worn fabric spun out in a trillion different threads. No time to remind you of the life you’d lived, or show you that there is so much more to this than rotten boots and splintered fingernails.

I remember you Anne. We rode the wind, you and I, wrapped it in cloth and sailed it into the unknown. Your hair whips out from under your headscarf, too matted by salt and grease to flutter. The skin on your nose is dry and peeling, baked red by the Azore’s sun whilst white crystals gather on the slender bones under your eyes. You’re still beautiful. Strong and determined and utterly surrendered to our adventure.

I remember the silent loneliness and how focussed you were. As days and nights merged into an endless, voiceless dream, punctuated by mindless chores, foul winds and white knuckles. You used to stand on the prow and scream obscenities into the air that would be thrown straight back in your face with a stinging, punishing slap.

- Fuck bitch cunt cock fuuuuuuck yooooouuuuu Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa! -

I miss you Anne.

To the daffodils in the sunshine. Gone again. Look! Look how they rock gently from side to side in the spring air, just like Eddie did, but without the pain. I used to watch him rocking and the agony would cloud around him like carpet dust in the winter sun. His summer never came back though, the agony just kept falling out of him until he was less and less and one day he was gone. And the morning air in Nepal? That’s a beautiful thing. I wasted many lives there thinking I had found what you asked. There is something special there, but not what you need. Many people feel it. But I was so young and in such a race to be done. I look now and am amazed at how stupid I could be.

I should stop. Chaos grows out from flitting around and around through endless dead ends. I may forget, but the darkness is knotted in tight, gnarled through everything like old nailed bark. Rotting rope on a dying tree. One of my worst deaths. Not the mechanics, death is always the same, and pain is pain no matter where or how. But the snarling and shouting, the rage and the lust. Most deaths are ordinary, just a few are terrifying. If terror was what I was looking for, if it was what you asked of me, I’d be done long ago.

Instead, out here again rusting hulks float by, roaming around satellites in an endless circling crying out “please take us home”. Great steel memorials, once gleaming with a triumph of purpose, moan, creak and cry like whale calves strayed from their mother’s weaning. He is close to me here.

I know you too Joshua King. “Is that you?” Your voice is a mix of surprise and boyish excitement. I dislike you already. I watch you scan around the gloom to try and find me. Just a few weeks and already you think we are the same, but we are not the same Joshua King. I am free, whilst your… They are trapped inside you. You are unnecessary, no matter how they flatter you, and I should show them.

I know you better than you do already. In the hours since your calling I have traced every moment of you. I feel her hand in yours, the softness of her skin the moment before and in that moment, when she’s ripped from your touch. I have felt that too, what you feel then. After the confusion and the terror and the helplessness and the grief there is something else, something unnamable that you will need to know one day. Love? What do you know of love, boy? They know it, but you smother them and the gifts they give you. They are not yours to keep. Let them go.

You’re laid flat on the floor, this Joshua here, staring up through the skylight that keeps out the dark. You gaze passed the birds who shadow dance once, twice and then again across the frame, dreaming up beyond the clouds of the lives you might start. If you lay very still and quiet, let your body go numb, your presence begins to fade like the last light of the day. Closer to me now than you know. Your heartbeat will slow to a vanishing drum and with patience you’ll finally float away.

Above lone birds, up through cumulonimbus swirls that dress and hide the darkening skies, beyond the pull that incarcerates us and the glare of the sun, up, up, up. Up beyond this place you know, far beyond moons, past superclusters, way back behind every history, time and space. Back to the darkness, where I search alone for an answer.

[danieldavidwriter]

Chapter 1: This darkness stretches out forever

This darkness stretches out forever. Cold and terrifying. It reaches out in every direction. Forwards, backwards, up and down, into the future and into the past. Inside. Outside. It touches everything and everything touches it. Sometimes briefly and sometimes for an eternity, sometimes returning over and over, backwards and forwards, forwards and back. Sometimes just a kiss, but this darkness is unavoidable. It stalks.

This darkness is an undeniable truth and there are few of those. There are truths that shine and sparkle and there are truths that thunder and crash. There are truths that lie still, waiting to be found and others that rush forwards and announce themselves brashly. Truths that tremble with the pure excitement of being and truths that stand bold and confident knowing that they are. There are truths that wither in the first light and truths that hold defiant as they slowly flake and crumble. But all of them, every last one, give way to this truth. This truth broods and simmers and devours. This is what I know.

Yes. It is not what you asked, but it is what I know. There are pockets of light. Great waves of heat and colour that burst out from the black in the most dazzling displays. I have seen them all, every last one. I have gazed in awe at each moment and turned joyful summersaults in the warm reverberations. I have returned to watch again and again, fixating on even the minutest change in the smallest particle with such intimacy that I had to lash out with exasperation, or drifting back back back to watch the whole show with perception splayed as wide as it can go. I have explored every instance there will ever be from every point in time and space in every dimension in every occurrence, but they all die out. Every last one. The darkness claws restlessly at their boundaries, toying as the edges fray. It waits as the light weakens and waivers, before it oozes back over every moment.

I have travelled outwards as far as my endurance would take me, far beyond time and reason where matter is stretched out to the very edge of existence. There are no wondrous supernova, no suns to gather around and no matter for rays to spindle their way through. No particles ever flutter there and silence holds where the wind once bellowed and sang.

Inwards too. Resting formless as the thick treacle of being rises and floods into every thought and hope and dream, and dance and laugh and glance, and touch and muscle and spec. Waiting still. So still that time begins to question me and the air begins to hum.

Throughout the black there is a hum. When you are gone it is gone, but when you are there it is there with you. It follows you in a swarm and picks away at you. Pick, pick, pick. From irritation and fear into madness and then beyond into something more hopeless and more true. This darkness is an undeniable truth. It tells you that you are alone and there is nothing except you and you are nothing. It hurts at first, but I am not afraid. Not now, with all this time. After? More because of. A part of.

At the very beginning, I did begin. Didn’t I?

Here. This darkness is the place where I learned to exist and then learned to exist alone. Always alone, sometimes once less so, but now always. My endless asking echoes more and more each time an answer never comes. What would it mean now anyway? My back and forthing consumed everything that I was or perhaps would be long ago. It split me apart, scattered me wide into the black and twisted my nature to something cold and bleak and lonely. Now, every time I try to leave, I lose my own path and begin yours again. Sometimes powerful, often hopeless. I am the blackness now. A void within the void. A shadow in the black.

[danieldavidwriter]

Boundaries

Days grew steadily into weeks as two people sat opposite each other, never eating, never sleeping, sometimes concentrating hard, often drifting in and out of dreams.

He sells quality used cars, little pieces of status for the almost wealthy. In the months when his results fall short of targets his hands shake uncontrollably as he sips black coffee in the empty showroom, or reaches for another bunch of keys from the wall.

It’s raining now. Warm and fragrant summer rain that bursts in dusty explosions on the dry earth.

She cuts hair, never colours. Her once delicate hands are covered in dents and calluses, sometimes twisting into claws when sharp pains shoot down her arms and into her fingertips. She notices their roughness most when she changes a nappy, her worn outsides brushing against soft new skin.

When the rain stops the air is warm and rich with the scent of drying pollen and washed pavements. The bees come back.

As the fortieth day darkens and the fortieth night begins, they both sit bolt upright, eyes wide and focussed, as everything changes. They both feel it. The world around them feels it too. The birds stop their twilight song and burst into the air in one great charcoal wave. The sun bleeds a sliver of fire which washes the whole sky with red ochre.

Their hearts beat so fast, faster than the raindrops had fallen, faster than the stars can rush back towards them, more in number than the cracks that appear in the walls and pavement and earth. Muscle and flesh and blood reach up and out from each other and into the air. Fear and hope and memories float away into the maroon night.

In the darkness of space, out in the deepest cold where nothingness wraps around a gasping truth, far back into the heart of time, everything is changed.

Here, the rain comes back, thumping hard onto my head and the tops of my toes as I stand still and silent on the earth where they once were. In the distance, the guns open up again and the air flashes to silouhette naked trees, running clouds, a bird dizzied by the shock waves.

My mouth is dry. I gaze up, up, letting my neck loll back and my mouth hang open to catch the water. Drop, drop. Each one a perfect pleasure.

[danieldavidwriter]

The Black Sky Above the Ocean

With a sharp steel snap that raced through the cabin in the instant it began to bloom wide open, and with a far away rumble that reverberated over the white tops of dark waves on the silent ocean far below and made just one gull spread it’s wings and rise free of the icy surface, the nuts and bolts and welds of the aeroplane’s manufacture a lifetime ago by the bare hands of men in the outskirts of a limestone built and drizzle damped town opened up, just as the folds and seams and stitches of time and matter and life and understanding opened up and the red and black swirls of fire and air that spewed forth announced that now was the time for this and only this and nothing else matters now.

Whilst the closest few disappeared immediately into the sublime chaos and energy of the instant and more were shaken and torn into the depths of the longer moment, the rest tumbled away from the soft fabrics and smooth plastics into the thin night air to gasp and gulp at the stars and reach out to one another and to the ending of time in wide embraces, as their bodies and arms and legs spun and swept in a dance choreographed by the end of everything.

If there is a God, then God surely danced with them and wept with joy at their restitution, and if there is a universe then the Universe opened it’s mouth wide and kissed them fervently until they fell so far inside that they were indistinguishable once more, as silence returned to the black sky above the ocean and the distance that is always between us came back, but not for them.

[danieldavidwriter]

Lost

We are lost.

Wait!

Say it again. Slower this time.

Shape it with your mouth and cradle it on your tongue.

Lost.

Let this word bloom for you, in this moment. Make it work. Illuminate it. A reverberating cry over a polished ocean, thick with fog. Or a faint whisper in the dark, almost swallowed back, whilst clutching somebody else's hand. For me, it is soft and trepidant, like the midnight kiss Mum gave to me each night, as she crept to bed alone. Bitter-sweet and delicate, like a peppermint moth bumping passed on the draft, looking for the light that was once there.

Once upon a time, I wasn't lost, but I can't remember when. Maybe we were not lost together. In the moment before these words, or yesterday. Last week? Or as long ago as the summer of 1979?

Back then, Ed and I would lie on our backs and smoke cigarettes in the damp daffodil shadows. Ten JPS from the corner shop, that would last us all month. Sick and sweaty with nicotine, we persevered. We kissed once or twice on sleepovers, but not for real.

When he threw himself off a roof, I’d already gone away, so I never knew why. I never got to ask, I never knew that I should. Maybe you did.

When I kiss now, all the kisses I ever shared remember in my lips. It's like a question we’re all asking together, a conversation we pass from person to person. If I ever find the answer, I'll email you. But there's no answer now.

Time passes.

You're not looking for me, but you find me anyway, and when you do you smile with a love that has no qualities.

"We are lost", you say, and embrace me roughly.

[danieldavidwriter]

In Rain

It was dusk when she came upon the house. It stood alone in a lifeless valley, glistening in the constant rain, marooned in a lake of knee-deep mud.

Inside, she twisted off her boots and removed her trousers, hanging them over a chair to dry.

As she searched the dusty cupboards for food, she wondered how far she'd walked today. She thought this every night. She'd forgotten long ago why she was leaving, or where she was heading, the fading memories of each day's travel now her only reference.

Hungry, she lay on the damp sofa and pulled her coat over her shoulders. In the gloom, she spotted a cluster of names scratched into the oak beam that topped out the room. Were there others then? Or was this some Coder tormenting her?

In the morning rain, she tightened her collar against her neck, before setting off once again.

[danieldavidwriter]

Ruin

On the day that you came, the mist at first light stood still on the surface of the sea, an edgeless barrier of rose, lilac and emerald swirls that forged secrets between the mouth of the cave and the world beyond. Where the mist lapped and bunted against the rock, water came together on the glacier scars and weather-beaten boils, before dropping in a slow shower onto my shoulders, the tops of my toes and the floor of the hollow.

On this morning, like every other for the last ten years, I stood in silence on the farthest edge of the land, a lonely witness to the return of the day, half in ecstasy, half in grief. My toes curled over the sharp border and I rocked my feet from side to side, enjoying the scratch of the stone against the soft recesses of their underside.

On some mornings the sea eagles swoop into view from their nest high above me, soaring on the offshore gusts that race up and over the land from across the water. On some mornings the grey seals who laze in great slate tangles on the flat rocks further around the headland, bob their snouts in and out of the waves, before diving deep to snatch squid and herring from the incoming tide. On some mornings when the wind is up, the spray from the waves that smash relentlessly against the cliffs, is blown all the way up to the cave, spritzing my cheeks and lips with salted blasts that tighten on my skin as they dry. But not today. Today the mist lay motionless on the surface of the sea, holding everything in a lifeless void, waiting until the time was right to fade.

I ate breakfast in the small atrium that opens up on the other side of a slender crack in the second cave. Almost invisible on first inspection, I discovered it several months after I arrived at the ruin above, the last find of over thirty caves and caverns that honeycomb the belly of the land, and occasionally punch out into the free air between the coast and the water. If you squeeze through the joint in the rock, almost doubling over to pass under the first fault, then turning about face to do the same at the second, you arrive gently into the most perfect, tiny space. Five steps at most. Illuminated faintly from a narrow vent high above, rain water collects in a mermaids basin and projects frills of light onto the walls, that tremble with every new drop. I spend hours here. My words and drawings cover the walls for someone else to find. An old habit from my former, networked life.

On bright mornings, I'll head up to the ruin to eat in the warmth of the rising sun. But not today. In the numb silence of the atrium, I ate stewed crab apples harvested from the knotted thicket that chokes the valley further inland, and preserved herring from last year's still unused provisions. Last year was a good year. A long autumn and unusually close warm current, meant that there were more fish and foraging than I could ever use. I perhaps took more than I should, but I have learned that it pays to plan for the worst.

After breakfast I checked the cables from the solar panels to the rig, and from the rig across the old pastures to the mast that snakes in and out of the rock on the eastern crag. Five miles of cable altogether, and a full mornings work to check every junction and inspection point.

In daylight hours - almost continuous in the summer months - I’m mindful of the Doves that drift endlessly overhead in a low, lazy orbit, taking time-stamped pictures and streaming back the barren landscape to the paranoid eyes and cruel minds of your home. The rock ledges, sun shadows and caves all work with me to hide from their gaze. The driftwood and branches I drape and stitch around myself add another cloak of invisibility. I’ve been filmed once or twice, so now I raid the servers after every excursion just in case, to erase anything that might betray me. A foot. An unusually long shadow. Even the innocent shrubs and wildlife that might look like a person when the light catches them strangely. All disappear.

In the early years, the mast was strapped to the watchtower of the ruin, but the signal wasn't so good there - too much interference from the hills and forests - and it's obvious location attracted a steady stream of mercenaries. Their visits were perversely welcome, providing an adrenaline jolt from the routine of life here, but the risks were too great, and I tired of revenge in the end. As their faces grew younger, or perhaps just as the vacuum of living between us yawned wider, I felt increasingly uncomfortable slicing and thumping my rage into their young bodies. Casting them into the sea.

The mercenaries are almost always from the slums. Their hands rough from farming the old parks and verges, or digging through the concrete to find enough viable soil to grow a little more food. Their faces and arms are scaled and pockmarked from the pollution and disease that ravages those less fortunate than you. You and your friends with still beautiful skin, moisturised and nourished in the shrinking bubble of comfort that remains. Safe inside the perfected world of plenty, whilst everything outside goes to shit.

It sounds like I'm judging you, blaming you for what happened, but I'm not. Not like you blame me. You're right to of course. What we did, what we left for you, and how I left you alone. Perhaps I always hoped you’d follow me. Burst out from the seductions and desires that brought us to such a dark and hopeless place, that rotted their way down into every last sinew of humanity. Perhaps I hoped that you, at least, would be spared the contemptuous glare of future generations. But the propagandists are too well versed at keeping the flame of resentment alive. Pouring a constant stream of salacious revelations and satisfying half-truths into the relentless news, networks and vlogs that keep the blame-game going, keep the guilty in play, and distract you from a whole new set of crimes and regret, just for you.

It was the festival that clinched it. You probably don't even remember it now, it was so long ago. Back when everything seemed normal, when people worked all week and played at the weekend, when we laughed together often and the terror only flashed up on our screens every now and then. In the summer sunshine we drifted from tent to tent, even holding hands sometimes, feeling the sun burn down onto our shoulders as the music thudded and swirled around us. But as we cruised, I glanced outwards at the faces around us, laughing and talking, posing and fronting, eating and drinking, gorging, wasting, abusing. Draining the world dry and drowning out the sounds of catastrophe with junk and chatter. I knew then, that one day it would come to this. I wanted to cry, but I danced with you instead.

When I finally left, I slipped away quietly one spring night, when you and your sister were fast asleep and the sun still had a few more hours to wait behind the tower blocks. I'd waited until the weather was mild enough to make the long trip north bearable, whilst the days were still short enough to travel far after dark. The night air was sharp with the spines of winter, but the approaching summer softened it with enticing scents of viburnum and young grass. I'd wanted to wake you, to tell you why, to tell you I loved you, but the lines that tugged us each along our own paths had already grown too strong for that. The cities had begun to collapse. Most of the people we knew were out of work and on the move, whilst those - like you - who had found themselves still needed - technicians and creatives mainly - were preparing to cut loose.

***

It took weeks to move the mast from the watchtower to the rock face, weaving it in and out of the granite and iron. My followers - I found out later - were convinced I was dead, finally silenced by the CSN. Perhaps you'd thought that too. But, as soon as I reconnected the servers I reinstated my defiance and attracted even more minds, reaching farther than ever before. The mercenaries lost track of the signal after that, the angles of the rock and magic of the sea creating a phantom trace somewhere offshore. They've been searching aimlessly in the swell and over the shallows ever since.

On the day that you came I sent out three messages, each one whirling through the mist to worm their way inside the networks and down into the devices clutched in soft, laborless hands, or propped precariously in the dust and damp of derelict homes. Three messages.

Usually their content is more memories and notes than deviant instructions or calls for resistance. Maybe that's why they, why you, hate me so. Propaganda is easy to brush away, life is harder to deny. I've even posted recipes, which I'm told - by those who can afford the ingredients - taste pretty good. The shrimp and pineapple salad we used to eat in summertime. The savoury pancakes you loved so much but we always forgot to make. Katsu.

I also share information. Some of it feeds back to me from my bots and spiders that crawl through the messages and data of the lucky few, some is sent to me by hackers hidden in the slums, and some comes from the handful of people brave enough to leak information from the inside. Cargo timetables. Pollution maps. Safe havens. Renditions and executions. And they send me you. I follow you from here in silence. Your updates. The pictures you share with friends. I laugh at your jokes. Follow your work details. Sometimes I even correct your grammar before your messages post. Like your reply to their latest termination order, awkwardly referring to me by my full name, missing the apostrophe in “island's”.

Your travelling companions were uninteresting bastards of this age. Brash and bold as they scrambled up the pike together, grasping and scraping over the running scree. Laughing and shrieking, their perfume drifted ahead in synthetic thumps that made the beasts amble indolently away into the undergrowth. Raised on too many simulations and immersive training scenarios, when their tech gave out to the dales and heights of this land, their fate became veined through the granite and mulch. The mass of a man waiting patiently for you, who plans to survive, who has a lifetime's rage to call upon when he requires it, is shocking. Overwhelming. The mercenaries from the slums offer a more rewarding fight. Hardened by the butt of greed, they take much more killing, but deserve it less.

You though, you came later. Waiting to see how things played out before you made your move. Watching calmly through the dry stalks of heather, feeling the ground creep it’s cold into your belly, waiting for the sun to retreat and give you opportunity. I knew you’d be smart. I know how you think, how you feel. I watched your soul grow from almost nothing, a warm pup wriggling inside my embrace, scratching against the hairs on my chest in your first moments, before beginning your journey away from me, along with the rest of the universe. Day after day.

I caught sight of you a couple of times before dark, a slight shift or dart in the corner of my eye, each time only just resisting the temptation to turn towards you. When you at last crept in from the night, past the waning fire, I wanted to open my eyes, to smile at you, or just watch you move gracefully through the patterns of light that dance so beautifully on these crumbling walls. The marks of the stonemasons, the axe blows and bullet holes, are lost amongst the texture of time. Lichen and other gentle life now rest softly on the weathered lines and scores. I wanted to open my eyes, but I kept them closed instead. I waited for you all this time, in this ruin. Waited until I felt the point of your blade puncture swiftly through my skin, grinding a little passed my ribs, before sinking effortlessly into my heart. When I opened my eyes, your blue gaze reflected back at me, our bond remembered by the hint of summer sky and warm, abundant oceans that your Grannie shared with us both.

I sent three messages today. The first was a routine sound off at dawn. The second, tapped out in the fading light, told how I slaughtered you and all of your friends as you crawled across the ground like a withering vine. I cracked their bones and ran their blood across the heath and stones. Casting them into the sea.

The third though, must be written by you. Resurrecting me. Setting yourself free. Perhaps a weather report, or the transit information for the wheat container which came through this morning, or maybe just another recipe.

You could go back of course, now that you’ve done what they asked of you. The stain on your history is gone and you’ve proved your dedication to the future. But who will send the messages that dawn has arrived, if the daughters like you are all gone?

[danieldavidwriter]

About Me

I was born in the UK in 1969, the youngest member of an RAF family, and spent the first thirteen years of my life moving from place to place, school to school, friend to friend.

I eventually settled on the south coast, scraping through school, partying from fourteen and spending much of my time staring out to sea.

After four years at art college, I began a career in arts and entertainment, setting up an artists co-op whilst working as a dole-funded performance artist, before working in the music industry, tech and cultural venues both physical and virtual.

I was writing all of this time, although I’m not sure I noticed. I wrote pop culture articles for magazines, critical essays, song lyrics and a small book about funding the arts.

I have always had a love of words and language, scene painting, a perfect turn of phrase, and the exploration of meaning, reality and poetry.

I wrote my first novel - Migration - on and off over three years, and it was published in July 2016. You can find Migration on Amazon here, or read the first few chapters here.

Migration imagines a possible future once current technologies mature, particularly looking at the singularity and digital immortality, and follows a small collection of people as they live through this new landscape.

I’ve recently finished a short story - Ruin - which looks a little nearer, to a time when AI and robotics cause a fundamental change to society. It is perhaps a little autobiographical, with a lot of time spent staring out to sea.

I am currently at the early stages of a sequel to Migration, a long dreamt of novel Joshua & The Lost Souls, and a short story about a widowed digital entity.