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heyfragics-blog · 8 years ago

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Jonny’s Story - Part 2

The car journey home felt numb, I silently left work, soaking wet and I sat in the car to come home, wishing I could be anywhere else, feeing lost, so withdrawn and contemplative I felt like I was watching another mans body turn the wheel and drive me home. Everything was on autopilot. I cried more, silently as my tired brain began to realise it had been almost 24 hours and it was still true.

I love my parents completely and I wouldn’t be here without them, but for those days they didn’t comfort me, they didn’t really know how to deal with a 19 year old son, completely distraught, they offered words of comfort and hugs, nothing made me feel any better. They were very British about it, offering help by not opening up in an honest way about feelings or experiences. I felt inconsolable and I called my best friend again to ask for advice and spent another almost sleepless night crying into my bed. That night I felt completely defeated. It was true, I couldn’t change it, and gradually I started to accept the reality. It felt like swallowing the bitterest medicine, almost impossible but I clung to the hope one day it would be better. I began to feel an emptiness, just a blank feeling about my life, I couldn’t imagine it without her. I messaged an ‘I miss you’ which was replied with an I miss you too and that made me cry and hurt even more. I got into the pattern of waking up at 2am, emotionlessly dragging myself into my car and driving in the moonlight to work. I look back on my car journeys fondly now. They were a blessing and a curse. At first being alone with my thoughts was impossible, torturing me. Eventually it became a sort of therapy, a space where I could be completely alone, I often listened to music, over and over I screamed 'you will see me’ by scroobious pip at the road in front of me. I had time to think, to evaluate and find an order in all of this chaos. It was funny to me who helped me through this time, obviously me and my best friend shared the experience, our good days and our bad days I often spent hours on the phone in the car just talking. Someone from my past, from the restaurant in stratford (Letty) was a surprising help to me. She listened for hours to me and offered words and encouragement that actually did help, it’s funny, in your darkest moments, the odd coincidences that lead you to recovery. The people you didn’t expect who rose, and those you did need who didn’t. I spent a few hours with a close friend sitting in the RSC grounds by the river 10 m away from where I had my first date talking with him about it. A friend to us both and not long single from similar circumstances I expected him to help me more than anyone, by I was met with little advice and just a repitition that I should just accept it and move on. In that stage I needed support, not a cold brutal truth. We walked miles down the river, beyond stratford into the villages you could reach, I was reminded always of things we had done together, places we had walked or dated together in town. It tortured me and constantly reminded me of what was now missing from my life. Through all this confusion, almost two weeks to the day after my break up I had my penultimate interview with British airways. That was my motivation, I felt like I was screaming, roaring under an emotional weight that I was desperately trying to lift to get to my future. In the end I drew motivation from maybe a more negative side than the positive. I was determined that she would not take this from me, I might feel like I had lost everything but I was going to fight till my heart and mind exploded under the pressure for my dream. And I did. I will be forever proud of the way I rose to that. For the last interview, I was sat in the car with my dad, starting at the British airways logo on the building, I felt crushed, I couldn’t breathe properly, my stomach felt like it was falling and he told me he was proud, to do my best, that he got nervous still, as a career pilot with over 20,000 hours in the cockpit and 15 years as a commander of aircraft for British Airways he was still nervous before he went for his sim check. I’m not often emotional with my dad but he looked me in the eyes with tears welling and told me I could do this. I swallowed my tears and hugged him hard and mentally took a defining moment to pack everything away, to rise, to calm and find my centre to go in there and fulfil my potential. I felt like I had lifted the weight, like for a brief moment I was standing tall, even with all of the shit dragging me back and I did my absolute best. I will always be proud of that, I have never risen to the occasion so much in my life and I left feeling like I could have done no more. The wait for the reply began and I settled back into my mind numbing routine of 2 am alarms for a 2 hour commute to work and back every day. 6 days on 3 days off. BA had given me an objective and I was now in limbo waiting for the response. Feeling aimless and exhausted I felt some of the feelings I had fought back in my moment of decision start to creep back in my mind. I was lost again, exhausted by my schedule and vulnerable to the feelings. I had moments where I thought it was all okay, I could handle this to crying alone in a gate at the far end of the airport between flights feeling so exhausted and tired that I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Eventually the day came where I received the email for my final interview result. I stood in the living room with my parents waiting, my hands shaking on the PDF attachment 'outcome of assesment’ my heart sunk as up to then each successful stage had read 'congratulations’ and I was believing it would tell me I had failed. The PDF opened and some British airways wings headed a letter starting with the words 'congratulations’. I dropped to the floor and started crying with my parents. It felt like all of the emotional torture, everything I had held back and tried to hold together was rewarded. I had something to be proud of. A direction in my life.

That was the start of my real road to recovery, my first victory to hold in my heart and be proud of what I’ve achieved. To be one of 70 from 10,000 who were successful. Life became slightly easier, I had a positive, a direction, a realisation of my dream. I still had low points, now I was done with assessment I could release everything I had bottled up and I still had a few nights crying but I was better. I was healthier and I felt happy at things again. In my weak points I would still miss her. I would be sending drunk messages like the weak twat I am and then passing out. I went through an incredibly unhealthy period that summer drinking till I blacked out at whatever party, my best friend putting me in the recovery position whilst I cried and vomited through my demons grabbing a hold on me. Thankfully I don’t remember any of the worst times, I had friends around me who nudged me back to recognising what I was doing is unhealthy and wrong. I will always be grateful to them for giving me the advice I needed to hear.

One day, and I don’t remember when, I found myself thinking about it and suddenly it didn’t pull my heart in the same way, my stomach didn’t drop like it used to do. And that made me excited and happy. In the same way that 'I love you’ had lost its kiss, the thought of her had lost its sting. This was the first day I felt better, the first feeling of progress. Maybe I can get past this, my life has still felt empty but MAYBE there is life after Amy.

Initially we were in regular contact but that was hurting me. One day I realised that just as I felt better I would message her and it would all fall apart again. I took the decision to distance myself. I was tortured by the answer of why, how had the perfect, unique, film story love evaporated so fast? She told me she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell me but it just didn’t go anymore. I was convinced there was something else but I was never sure. Some months after she is now seeing one of our housemates. I had thought about this, was she cheating? Was that why and I was told that by a friend but I never found out for sure. Now I’m at peace with the situation, I always believe you shouldn’t hold a grudge, if you want to be cynical, don’t let them hold you back but I believe let your life be about positive things. I now accept it happened, I’ve dealt with it and truly I’m just happy for the good times. It hurt me so much because it signified the end of something I had valued so much, because of the happiness I had found. I had some of the happiest moments of my life but that chapter closed. There’s new adventures waiting for me. I was asked by her to maybe see her for coffee at the end of that summer. 4 months on we had met awkwardly to swap possessions in a car park, and again at a pub quiz with mutual friends. It was painful, awkward and just an unpleasant feeling. I politely told her no and good luck. Again, I wanted to be at peace, To move on, cherish the past but live in the present. If I’m honest I still probably think about it every day maybe, it was such a part of my life it will never be 'erased’ but it WAS a part of my life and now I’m free of it. There were ups and downs, good and bad days, a string of empty jack daniels bottles, and a few hearts i cruelly broke and some dubious promises in my road to recovery but I’m now living what was my dream all those years ago when I left school wanting to be a British Airways pilot. I’ve fallen in love with a wonderful girl. I don’t like to compare loves, it is a wonderful feeling and I’m so happy. Some things are different, some are the same but it’s like a different flavour of the same beautiful drug. I often stop to think about my past, the moments, chance encounters, people who helped me and people who didn’t. How I stopped talking with the girl from the restaurant as we drifted apart who I owe so much to. Meeting my best friend who helped each other through the confusing pain and seeing him in a happy relationship. How if I hadn’t decided to go home one weekend in July I would never have met and sat next to a beautiful French girl, who turned out to be amazing and wonderful and who 3 months later took me to Paris to spend a weekend in a 5 star hotel walking the banks of the river and kissing on top of the Eiffel Tower telling each other 'I love you’. I’m grateful for all these little moments, they’re like a collage of my soul, a patchwork of love and despair, the whole rainbow of emotions, successes and failures and a future to be told by encounters I have no idea of. ❤️

Author: Anonymous

#Fragics #EP #Typewriter #Personal #Story #Reveal

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heyfragics-blog · 8 years ago

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Jonny’s Story - Part 1

“I’ve always been a romantic person, to believe that there is such a thing as true love, happy endings do exist and that there is nothing in life that completes someone as much as being in love. At 18 I met a girl who I fell hopelessly for, I chased her for the whole summer after I left school, I was moved by her, that feeling of invincible happiness just by being so happy to be flirting and decidedly falling for somebody. I spent hours on my roof watching the sunset listening to music and being so happy with the world, maybe the happiest time of my life.She was wonderful, clever, ambitious, caring in her heart, and loving in her actions. Weeks of ups and downs followed with me chasing her. I had slept with her best friend in a moment of drunken lust and I spent all summer trying to correct for that and convince her. Twice we were together in a bed or alone on the floor of a party kissing and so close together but it was too much and tears started that no apologies could correct for. After a confusing summer of love tinged with rejection she left for uni and I was left searching for a job to chase my dream of becoming a pilot. It took her leaving for uni for one drunken fresher night FaceTime for her to say she had told people here she had a ‘boyfriend’ back home and she thought it was me. My heart exploded at the thought, to hear those words from her mouth made me feel untouchable, it made my soul glow to think we were 'together’ at last. I came to see her at university, to see each other at last and she was waiting with a complicated message from her friend to tell my girl she wasn’t happy with the two of us together because (her best friend) found it weird. I was so angry and frustrated with her, she had been silent all summer about us but the moment we acted on it she wasn’t going to allow it. We were both heartbroken, acknowledging the complexity of the situation, but still we were here at last, together and I wasn’t going to leave. We had our first kiss, nervously. It’s like a firework in your soul to be connected to that person, to hold them in your arms and be with them. We had a perfect day in Bath, seeing the city and wandering around hand in hand completely in love. A perfect meal over candles, it was perfect, true romance, not a cliche, just pure, natural and perfect in both our eyes. We saw each other maybe twice more and then we were together in front of our friends for the first time as an open couple. Of course everybody knew but as we stood there, holding hands we were both glowing at the feeling. It was wonderful to be put in front of people as one couple. At the stroke of midnight and to 'I will wait by Mumford and sons’ on the first of January 2014 under confetti and lights of a club I told her I loved her and she smiled the most wonderful smile and told me she absolutely loved me too. I felt a raised level of connection for her, to be closer to anyone else than I’ve ever been before. Everything feels perfect when you are in that space. Life’s challenges become easy, you’re confident, relaxed, fulfilled as a person and being truly in love helps you grow and lift yourself in ways you never even realised. It helps you to be your best self and realise your potential. We spent the entirety of 2014 in love. We worked together, it never lost its honeymoon sweetness, of course reality and routine crept in but we would make the effort to see each other. Driving down after a late shift in the dark through the Cotswolds excited to see her, still with butterflies when we met, when we kissed. We would make the effort for each other, I stole her away for weekends in fancy hotels it was ridiculous two 18 year olds, one a waiter and one a student could afford but I saved up tips and my hourly to make special things happen. We were so happy, I touched the perfect balance, true romance but still firmly in the real world, stable, healthy and so so happy. She helped me through my bitterest disappointments, crying over my failed attempt to get into British airways and helped me back on the path to success. Whatever subsequently happened I will always be grateful for the help she offered me in those moments, I would maybe not be where I am without her.

I became very very close with her mum, truly the loveliest woman I have ever known, she had a heart of gold and was fighting her own demons but saw the best in anyone, even the ex-murderer she once met on the bus. She welcomed me into her and her daughters life unreservedly, even bringing us cups of tea on Saturday mornings in bed. She helped me almost as much, maybe even more than Amy in my critical lowest moments, and I will absolutely always remain thankful for her kind words when I needed them. I even saw her in her house to say goodbye and thankful after the relationship had exploded to wish her a heartfelt thank you and best wishes for her struggle.

I never felt the same welcome with her father, I was always at arms length, polite but no more than that. Somewhat of an inconvenience and not unwelcome but at the same time not comfortable, I was always on my best behaviour and never at ease, her step mum did her best to ease things and was lovely but I was always more comfortable in her mums house.

I set out to carry on my journey to the cockpit. I started literally at the bottom, with a temporary summer contract as a baggage handler. I got the interview and offer on my birthday and started a week later, moving into a BandB to start my training for the ramp. It was painfully obvious I was a little posh boy, I always try to carry myself modestly and I made no mention of being a pilot or British airways but I stuck out. I quietly tried to do my job and be professional but I was constantly reminded of how much people disliked me, how much I didn’t belong there. I was working physically hard breaking my body throwing 200 20 kg bags into a plane and packing them in 20 minutes again and again and again at any time between 4am and 3am. I was desperate to give up, I hated it and I only found comfort in the encouragement and support given to me by Amy. I was helped by her and her mum so much, even my own parents weren’t supportive of me, they decided I had no other option but to carry on, I had to for my dream. I spent so many nights desperate to come back to Amy, my broken body and at my limit of what I could put up with, I was made to feel better, helped through the worst by her. I felt lucky to be so supported and it bought us both closer, I felt so blessed to have someone who helped me selflessly and we were still smiling and easily in love even in the worst of it. We ended up living together in her student house. It was a half hour or so from the airport and perfect for cheap living. It was super stressful, lots of early starts being polite around students going for nights out when you came back in and seeing them coming back as you left, it was exhausting but we still made time for each other. We still went on cute dates and did special things. The routine was there but we still made stand out moments. My job improved, moving off the ramp into the job I wanted via a stint in ops, now I was controlling the turnaround out on the apron and I felt motivated I was moving in the right direction toward my goal. The hours were just as long but t was more bearable being motivated. Christmas came and went still in love and new year. It still felt special but at a certain point, somewhere in the new year I felt I ran out of superlatives, when you tell someone every day you are souls yes or you love them with your whole heart it becomes routine, a baseline, how can you say more than that, how can you make it special. It was just a thought but it crept into my head. Her Christmas exams did not go as expected so the pressure was on for her to do well in her summer exams. The opening for British airways arrived so I was waiting for that and striving for the next stage, the next interview, the next test. One day I felt it. Suddenly she was distant, I wasn’t feeling the same, the special feeling disappeared. 'I love you’ became so normal it had no meaning, we were drifting, the magic had gone completely. Overnight. We were living together, both aware of this growing elephant in the room but neither of us were doing anything about it. After the break up I saw the music video for 'Still’ by daughter and the similarities struck me hard. We carried on for maybe a month, I was desperate for the old relationship back and I pushed for that. And then the word love meant missing, we were sleeping next to each other, facing away just too timid, too afraid of the answer to ask the question seriously. I was still in love with her, I was terrified, upset, I could feel something going terribly wrong but nothing I tired was working. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion from the passenger seat. One day I came to start my 6 day pattern, driving the 1 and a half hours down to Bath, I dragged my suitcase through the door and she grabbed my arm and pulled me into our room. She told me that she couldn’t do this anymore, things had changed, she didn’t feel the same and she didn’t love me anymore. I felt like I had jumped out of a plane, my stomach falling and I went into panic, I begged, I pleaded, I professed my love entirely. I told her I felt the magic go and I was desperate to be 'back like we were’ , we cried, I was on my knees and her sat on the end of our bed. Tears dripping everywhere I just felt helpless, my whole world, the last 20 months disintegrating in front of me. She begged me to stay and not to drive home but I couldn’t, I dragged my suitcase back, I got Easter eggs from my car I had got for the house and handed them tearfully to a housemate who gave me a hug and wished me well. I sat in the car feeling empty, destroyed. I called home to tell them I would be coming back and I started driving home. I called my best friend. Crying and crying he had broken up with his long term relationship 2 weeks before. He listened to me as I cried and drove home through rain and my own tears. I felt no better for all his consolation. I didn’t really accept it, it was so much of an attitude change to have someone you have spent nearly two years with evaporate from your life. I wished it had never happened, I could forget, I could be like the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and have somebody delete my memories. It sounds incredibly dramatic but it is comparable to having someone you live pass away. Suddenly, even with an incling of warning it all disappears and then go through the same processes. At first I couldn’t accept it, I wouldn’t, it wasn’t possible. I couldn’t imagine my life going forward with that big of a hole in it. Gradually it faded to a grim acceptance. The adage that time is the only healer was repeated to me by countless friends. It is cruel but true, there’s nothing you can really do right now to make t better but one day it will be okay. That night I came home to my mother who hugged me and sent me to bed. I was two hours in my own bed before I had to get up for work. I didn’t sleep at all, I dragged myself up and into my uniform, I set out at 2am for Bristol airport. It felt like a bad dream, driving by moonlight, all alone in a very contemplative zone I almost convinced myself it didn’t happen. I cried all the way there, for nearly 2 hours. I took 5 minutes to gather my thoughts in the staff car park. I wiped away my tears, I got my shit together and I put a very fake and unconvincing brave face on it. I was a zombie, reactive but not present. I was so tired, physically and emotionally. Everybody of course knew something was up, even passengers looked at me funny and friendly familiar crew faces asked if I was alright. I got out an unconvincing yes, everybody looks like they’ve been crying when they dragged themselves up at 3am. I t was raining as it often was, I didn’t have my waterproof trousers and I sat there on the wing watching people board silently crying. The tears lost in the rain. I was staring at couples wishing so strongly to be that lucky, to have someone and to be with Amy, to make sense of it, to process what had happened but I could not.

TBC in Part 2…

Author: Anonymous

#Fragics #EP #Story #Personal #Reveal

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heyfragics-blog · 8 years ago

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LRB - Infatuation

The phone buzzes in my pocket.

Fish and chips in the oven, the text message reads. We both sigh and my hands absently type a reply that I don’t send. When I am in front of him, it is like the past six months haven’t happened. I feel something like shame; it is embarrassing the way that I have tried and failed to keep away from him. I remember the long nights when the smell of bleach burned my nostrils and I would close my eyes and echo the sound of him; the in-out-in-out of his breath and picture the way it caught my hair.

I am rooted to the spot. It has started to rain light drops on my cheeks and I pull my coat tighter, whisper a goodbye, and pull myself away from his gaze.

When I get home they are sat rigidly in front of the TV. Kev holds Jackie’s hands in his and I imagine him making a visible effort not to move his head towards the sound of my key turning in the lock.

“Sorry, finished late,” I mumble, bending down to pull off my sensible, waterproof shoes. This job is the first bit of freedom they have allowed me. I can tell Jackie is itching to stroke my hair, ask me how my day went and pull me into her.

“Leave her be,” Kev would have said when they heard me coming up the path, “Give her a chance”. I am grateful, so I tell them that the people are kind, that this could be exactly what I need.

“Rain’s getting heavier”, Jackie says as I walk through to the kitchen. I can see the question she wants to ask bubbling behind her tongue.

“I came home through town.” Jackie visibly relaxes.

The knowledge of him feels like a tightness in my chest. My body aches to pull me back to where he is. I have to fight my legs to sit down at the kitchen table, and wrestle my arms to push food around my plate. When I look out at the rain, pounding now against the glass, my eyes skim past the photograph on the windowsill. I always knew he watched me. Even when, as a tiny girl, I was pulled down the coastal path by my mother, clinging on to her fingers lest a gust of wind tug me away. When mum died, Jackie would take me to visit, bounding forward at the sight of him and running away when he came close. “You mustn’t be afraid”, she would say, “It won’t hurt you unless you let it”. My play was always heavy with expectation. Longing. Now, the longing tries to return. I can feel it fighting for dominance. It makes the blood in my veins run slow and thick. It makes my head spin with dreams of his consuming heaviness over me.

“Let me run you a bath; you’ve had a long day”. Jackie’s voice rouses me from my daydreams. I have moved the food around just enough to make it look like I have eaten. I pull a smile onto my face.

“It has been a long day.” When she takes my plate up to the sink, one hand absently straightens the little pink frame. I don’t think she knows she does it – I don’t think she knows I am watching. Later, when I am curled up in the bedroom I grew up in she comes in and strokes my wet hair back from my face.

“Well done today. I’m so proud of you.”

‘I took the coastal path’ I want to tell her, but I don’t. Because she is proud of me.

You get used to the hourly groan of metal on metal; now the silence rings through my head as I wait for morning light to bleed red through the curtains. Before they drove me away, I spent half an hour making the bed. I pulled the corners tight, even though I was sure Jackie would tug off the sheets the minute I was gone. I screamed as I watched them climb into the car and drive the three hundred miles back home. I was angry, and when everyone began digging inside me it was easier to blame them than admit that I was jealous. Because you welcomed my mother into you but threw me away. I loved you so much I wanted you to own me, the way you owned her.

Jackie didn’t speak to me for months. I could barely look her in the eye so it was Kevin that filled the silences with stories from work on the boats. They must have told him about you, because he stopped talking about the fish and the weather out at sea. I don’t remember what we talked about after that. Not mum, who left the house when I was six and resurfaced bloated and blue. Not my broken brain or the things they were doing to fix me. Not you.

“Are you coming with us?” Jackie is nervous. I play dumb even though I know what day it is. Today is my mother’s forty-seventh birthday and Jackie has arranged for me to have the day off, even though I didn’t ask for it. I think about going with them; about laying flowers on the earth and watching Jackie pull up the weeds and sing one of her hymns. I wonder if, when my uninhibited tears began to fall, Kev would pull me to him and let me cry on his shoulder.

“Later”, I say. “Alone.”

I’ve been gone for so long I can’t get enough of him. Even as the wind bites I try to catch him in my hands and feel him lick his way between my toes. I am safe when I am with him; I am home even as he pulls away. I hold my fist above him and watch the lock of hair, cut with kitchen scissors from the underneath, dance. If I close my eyes, I can imagine the weight of him. If I close my eyes, I can hear him call me to dance too. Once upon a time, I thought if I answered him he would welcome me in with open arms. I felt him bite as I removed my clothes and let myself be carried but he spat me back out: survivor’s instinct kicked in. I was washed up, shivering and empty.

It’s colder now. I am weaker; they made sure of that. Maybe this time he will want me: he will fill me up and take me away with him. I should have told them the truth – that time has worn their medicine away and he is filling in the gaps again – but there is something beautiful in the way that I am doomed to pass him every day and convince myself that his sighs are not for me.

I shiver, less from the cold than with … anger; bitterness. I gave him everything I had but I am still woven in his web and it hurts. These feelings hurt more now, like they are etching themselves into me again. I want to throw something but I slip the stones into my pocket instead. He laughs at me. He rushes towards me and then flees again and I think I could tear at my insides and all I would find is water. Him. It was this image, his unfurling fingers gesturing me to him, that soothed me when I couldn’t erase that final image of the mother he killed. He welcomed. They kept telling me I was sick but it was him. Always him, inside of me and part of me and always, always whispering. Confessing would mean tests and treatments again, hundreds of miles from home. From him. So when his fingers start to crawl up towards my neck I close my eyes and shout my presence, my frustration, my desire. And then I whisper a goodbye and tell him that I will come back soon. I turn around and wade back onto land. I go home.

#infatuation #Fragics #Typewriter #EP #Story #Author #Fiction

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heyfragics-blog · 8 years ago

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LRB - Jealousy

It’s like a hunger, but not for food … a wanting. I look it up when I am alone in the rec room. Jealousy, it’s called. Envy. It should be green but it feels more like yellow. Sunlight yellow. Yellow that you want to lie back and bathe in.

I think it’s a test at first because it tastes funny in my mouth; not like I remember. I find myself staring after pretty girls that walk past my window; blonde girls, with the perfect nose and little half smiles behind their eyes. Someone zips by on roller-skates and it crawls up my throat again. I have to swallow it down, try and trap it in the hollow of my chest.

It has been eleven months since my procedure. I convinced them to let me stay, but I’m not really a patient any more so they moved me to a room with a big window that looks out onto the street. I go into town every so often to prove I can cope in the outside world, but mostly I just watch through the glass. It dulls the sound. The world is too noisy – too far removed from the quiet inside my head. That was a line from one of the commercials I did when the programme first started making its mark in Britain: ‘there is a peace inside my head that wasn’t there before’. I was sat on a pristine white set looking through a window and they tried to get me to imagine it was raining outside. I’m not very good at imagining. Afterwards they patted me on the back and said I did a good job.

I don’t have to go to session or eat with the others, just check in with my mentor every few months like anyone would. But every morning I still pull up a plastic chair and join the circle of patients. There are four of us today. Robyn and Jamal both went home two days ago and no one new has moved up to take their places yet.

“Ali, do you have anything to say?”

“The session groups are getting smaller.”

“And how does that make you feel?” She turns her head to look at Matthew, the session leader. Ali is blonde, with white teeth and blue eyes. The rest of us stare blankly ahead.

“I don’t feel anything. But, I suppose, we are very lucky.” It is the perfect answer but I swallow the bitterness down.

“You are. You are very lucky.” Ali is one of the newest in our level, but she has been in the programme for two months or so. For the first three weeks they take sessions with us: we are proof that the procedure works. They want it to be a choice, and we are sedate and content. I remember how Ali screeched and screamed at first. Angry, I think. She accused them of kidnapping her and keeping her a prisoner even though they always walk through the door themselves. She was not beautiful then: her face was blotchy and tears mixed with spit and mucus as she fell and kicked and punched. We turned away like you would turn away from a screaming child. Looking back now, I resent her tenacity but I do not show it. We only see them in the canteen and the rec room then, until they go off for the procedure. It was only three months after Ali came back that they started calling her out for commercials and promo work. They use Ali as the poster child for Northeast House even though I was one of the first.

“Jackie, can I have a word?” Ann was one of the first people I met when I arrived. She is small and elegant and hides her wrinkles behind lots of make-up. She is one of the most senior members of the psych team and is always being interviewed on TV and radio as one of the first in the profession to support the procedure in the UK. She doesn’t have to wear the sky blue scrubs that most of the staff do. Today, her scarf is a delicate shade of pale pink. I have not seen her wear it before. I want it.

Ann’s office is big and airy, with two chairs at one end and a coffee machine and books upon books. I have only been in here once or twice. The smell of perfume makes me shiver. It is a stark contrast to the clinical smell that I have got used to. The office is homely. The scarf is lovely.

“How are you?”

“Well,” I say. I picture the way the silk would feel against my palm and have to tense up to keep myself from reaching out. She doesn’t notice, only gestures to one of the chairs beside the window. It looks out onto the lawn.

“As you know,” she begins, taking a seat opposite me and leaning back. “Your decision to stay on here at Northeast House has given us the opportunity to observe the after-effects of the procedure.” There is a pause as though she is waiting for me to respond. The tassels of the scarf fall into her lap.

“I am very lucky” I say, echoing Ali’s words. “You are very generous”.

“I will get right to the point.” She loosens the scarf. “Unfortunately there is no easy way to say this. We have been hearing some disturbing reports, Jackie; reports that suggest that the effects of the procedure may be … less than permanent.” I keep my face impassive but my heart thumps as she twists a piece of hair behind her ear, her hand brushing the scarf on its way back into her lap. “Some – not all, but some – of our earlier patients have reported a slight … increase … in the level of emotive response beyond what we would expect.”

“They are getting sick again?”

“It’s early days. We haven’t yet been able to establish the full extent … two or three weeks ago, Jackie, you reported to your mentor –“

“Cheryl.”

“Cheryl, yes. You reported to Cheryl that you were having some difficulty sleeping … I wanted to ask you whether you had … noticed any other changes. Anything at all that might cause you some concern; that you think might help us in our understanding?”

I look out onto the neatly manicured lawn. I think of what might happen if Ali were asked to take my place in the room with the window that looks out onto the street. I think about what might happen if she were to lose her composure, how unpredictable she would be and how she would put the whole organisation at risk. I have to stop the corners of my mouth from curling up. I’ve seen what anger does to people; they showed us a video. As she spat and growled and broke I would watch on, poised and sedate. Dignified; elegant. Even if they didn’t choose me to take her place on the campaigns, it wouldn’t be her …

“No.” I try not to stare too hard at the way the scarf catches the light. “No, I haven’t noticed a thing.

#Jealousy #Fragics #EP #Story #Author #Short Story #Fiction

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heyfragics-blog · 8 years ago

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LRB - Lust

Sat in her home office, Stephanie’s head was throbbing. The three of them had got through two and a half bottles of wine before pressing the button, and had started another afterwards. Now the house seemed too big. She kept pressing refresh.

@illicitconnections You’ve just pissed off hundreds of people across the country. Well done #homewreckers #skanks

I’m not siding with cheats but what right does @illicitconnections have to judge anyone? #bitingthehandthatfeeds

@illicitconnection skanks deserve 2 die ne1 knows were 2 find the homewrecker whores?

The tweets kept coming. Over and over she read about how she deserved to be beaten and raped; how she was disgusting and she would pay. Already the story had made the front page of every news outlet and there had been speculation over a potential film. She imagined Jo and Sophie doing the same thing, flicking through social media sites and cataloguing everything that was being thrown at the three of them. Jo wouldn’t care; she would only see the ‘congratulations’, the scorned lovers who wish they had been involved. Sophie would be pragmatic. She would double check that their involvement wouldn’t be detected and then she would go about her day. They had worked up to this moment for over three years; ‘playing the long game’, Jo had said. Establish the service, get people talking, then sit back and watch it all unfold. Stephanie checked her bank balance. More than enough. Three years of illicitconnections had made her more money than five years of full-time administration work.

It was Jo that started it. She found them on a support website specifically for victims of fidelity considering the Procedure. Stephanie had only been registered for a week when Jo privately messaged her; Don’t run from this – use it! Help me get revenge. Even now, Stephanie couldn’t think about that with some sort of embarrassing pride. Out of all the people, only Sophie and Steph were chosen. Jo was the popular kid, clever and canny, and the way she phrased her proposition – they agreed without knowing what they were doing. “For me, I think what hurts the most”, Sophie had confided at the start, “was that he thought I would never find out. I thought we had the perfect marriage – everyone thought we had the perfect marriage”.

“It was a mistake, I swear”, Rudy had said the first time. “I know how I feel now; I know that it’s you that I want”. Steph didn’t tell him that that was all she wanted to hear – that he loved her. That he chose her. She forgave him again when she found the texts, “Please, mi cielo, it was just sex not love. I love you, my heart is with you.” She was staying late at work when she received the phone call from her sister-in-law that ended everything. She was so sorry to tell me, she hoped it was nothing. She thought maybe they were just friends but friends aren’t that … well, she was sorry and if there was anything she could do … What finally made the decision for Steph was the fact that someone else knew. It wasn’t a dirty secret they could hide at family barbeques. God, what a fool. She was looking up ways to ease the shame, if nothing else. The heartache was nothing new. She had had a long time to come to terms with the fact that he was a cheat, but the embarrassment …

Within months, Jo had started running the website as a business. Charge them for a premium subscription; charge them for full access to other members. At the beginning, the sexy pictures they used on the website were pulled from the internet, but some were Jo. Jo with her confidence and her killer body. The three of them became like a squad. They emailed back and forth, met every few months to discuss the site. They didn’t phone every two hours to see if she had showered, or ask when the last time was she left the house. Steph thought the others might meet up without her occasionally, but if they never mentioned it, neither did she. Within nine months she had saved enough for the Procedure. In a year she had gone part time; eighteen months and she quit her job to work full time on the website.

She had got used to the clients after a while. The messages between housewives and other people’s boyfriends shamelessly arranging daytime liaisons; or husbands trying to justify dirty weekends away. When Jo found her ex-fiancé’s profile page she framed a screenshot so they could all display it at their desks: a reminder that the clients were all leeches.

The first bottle of wine was a celebration. Three years of work and they had chosen Stephanie’s wedding anniversary to destroy it all. By the second bottle, they discussed keeping the site running and going on a girl’s holiday with the money it generated. Stephanie showed them photographs of the November she dressed the Guy Fawkes in her wedding dress and let her children toast marshmallows as it burned. Jo announced that she was getting IVF. That she didn’t want to be alone.

It was Stephanie that pushed the button in the end. By the third bottle of wine, it had been done.

#Lust #Fragics #EP #Story #Short Story #Author #Fiction

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heyfragics-blog · 8 years ago

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LRB - Nostalgia

“Why do you want to be a part of this study?” The camera fixes on the old lady as she twists her hands. On the table in front of her, steam spirals away from a Styrofoam cup.

“The grass was greener … I don’t remember the last time I saw grass that wasn’t put there by a shovel.”

A decade ago I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Dr. Arkwright in Chicago. It was the early years of the Procedure but … to erase emotion almost entirely … we had a disagreement. When I returned to the UK I started working on my own research. For a long time we’ve known that playing elderly sufferers of Alzheimer’s and Dementia the music that they grew up with can enhance mental performance, but I was sure – I am sure – that the true power comes from the associated emotional memory. Yes, the number of elderly people being diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease is increasing each year … it’s becoming more and more common for the Procedure to be used as a way to tranquilise the older generation. In my research … I’m trying to prove that there’s another way.

Yes, it’s important to see that no one is pushed into any of these trials. They might be elderly but we feel it is very important to let them take control. I first met Trixie through Oak Ridge care home; my work was explained to her and she was very determined to be a part of it. She was well – we obviously complete medical examinations of all our patients. In my medical opinion there was no need for her to be living at Oak Ridge, she would have managed perfectly well in supported living accommodation, or even on her own. She said her children … wanted to be sure she was looked after. The first time, Trixie was gone for minutes, but she took three hours to return. To properly return, I mean. To remember where – when – she was. She wasn’t distressed only … vague, distant. Tired, I think.

“Trixie, I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need you to be as clear as possible with your answers, okay?” Trixie nodded, her cheeks still marked with tears.

“Where were you?”

“ … I was home.” The room on the screen has a bed and a chair but little else that belongs. Helen remembers moving the table to make space for the equipment.

“I’m going to need you to be a bit more specific than that, Beatrice.” She wished she sounded kinder. “Where was home?”

“The house I grew up in … 7 Dove Close.”

“And were you alone?”

“I could hear the boys, playing on the green. Playing cricket, I think.”

“And what were you doing?”

“I was in my bedroom, reading a magazine.” Trixie raised her hand to the light to examine it. “I got a paper cut.” She jumped slightly when Helen took hold of the hand and turned it over in her own.

“ … Interesting. Was there any pain?”

“Nothing.”

Beatrice was the third subject I had worked with and she was, by far, the most susceptible. With most of the subjects – people – with most of the people I work with it is successful every … one in three attempts but with Trixie it worked almost every time. I don’t know. I still don’t know why. Yes, after a few months I began seeing her more regularly. I … I was very careful not to tire her out too much. I always … I always checked with the staff first, made sure that she was feeling up to it. No, she never refused me. Well, our visits seemed so successful I saw no reason not to continue. I wanted to know what made her so different from my other subjects. She never refused me, she enjoyed our visits. In fact, she encouraged me to continue. I made no secret of the fact that I was seeing her more often than the others; I have a consent form signed by Beatrice and I continued videoing all of our sessions. We were making progress. If I thought she was getting carried away …

“It was a Sunday.” Beatrice was glowing. She was sat in a chair in the imitation sixties sitting room and as she rested her head back the sunlight made her grey hair shimmer. “Freddie was playing with his trains and Robert was sat at the piano. I was there for hours. We’ve been making plans for a holiday by the sea.”

“It sounds lovely.”

“We are so lucky. I gave Freddie his bath and he went right to sleep, and when I came downstairs, Robert had put on the wireless and I told him my news.” Almost unconsciously, Trixie’s hand moves to her stomach. “He said, aren’t we just the luckiest two people in the world, and we are. We are!”

Probably. Yes, I probably should have stopped there. But I didn’t even notice, not really. We got … close. She didn’t have anyone else. In the year we worked together her family visited once, for an hour, and rarely called. She would go weeks without seeing or speaking to anyone other than staff. It’s the truth! She used to ask me if you were going to call and – I’m sorry, your honour. Yes, speaking in the present tense is considered a worrying sign. In any other case I would have stopped the procedures but, please let me speak, she begged me not to stop. Just imagine, for a moment, that you are eighty years old; divorced. Your children have grown up and … have lives of their own. But memories fade. It’s like looking through a fog that gets thicker and thicker, so that you never actually know if you’re remembering a memory or the memory of a memory. Some of our patients describe a sense of guilt at not remembering someone’s face or voice, like they should have been paying more attention. Then you have medical professionals trying to persuade you to give up … that the only way of easing some of your loneliness and pain is to pay out to live out the rest of your days as nothing more than a zombie. Her memory was fading. She needed me. One of our subjects got to hold his stillborn child again; somebody else … Your honour, what we do – the opportunities we offer – they change the lives of people who believed they were beyond changing. They are hope.

“I’m going to stick these pads on your skin now, Trixie, and you might feel a little shock, like before. Just relax.”

“You know, this time I should very much like to see my brothers, do you think I could?” Helen looked down at her hands. She tried to block out the sound of her own voice telling Trixie to count backwards from ten.

“Yes, okay. Shall I begin now? Okay …” The video was time-lapsed. The Helen on the screen made notes at first. Now and then she got up to make a drink or look out of the window.

It was two hours. The longest she had been gone. The machines started going crazy, her blood pressure was rising and we couldn’t bring it down. There is no protocol for bringing someone … back. We brought ice packs, tried to keep her temperature down … No. There was nothing we could do. It was another hour? Forty five minutes?

The old woman was dripping with sweat by the time she opened her eyes. Although nobody could see them, Helen remembered how bruises were already starting to form on her papery skin.

“Trixie, you’re back now. Deep breaths, it’s okay. You’re okay. You need to tell me what you saw. Trix, what upset you?” Someone sobbed quietly.

“My father, oh god, my father …” she was writhing on the bed, Helen leaning across to hold her down. She tried to focus Trixie’s eyes, smooth the hair from her face.

“Trixie, I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need you to be as clear as possible with your answers, okay?” Beatrice was clearly exhausted. Her skin was so pale it was almost blue. She gave an almost imperceptible nod of the head and Helen looked around to make sure they were still being recorded.

“Where were you?”

“At home. 7 Oak Close.” Helen gave her some time. “It was someone’s birthday … maybe mine.”

“It’s okay, take your time. Who was there?”

“Mother had baked a cake … yellow frosting.”

“And was your mother with you?”

“And the boys. Getting on my nerves. Father had a camera …” She closed her eyes then, seemed to sink further into her pillow.

“And what happened then, Trixie? What frightened you?” The Helen in the courtroom wished she had given her more time, came back the next day. She could feel the eyes of Trixie’s family burning into her, watching her response. Tears and sweat pooled on the old lady’s pillow. She seemed to struggle for breath as sobs wracked her tiny body.

She had been at her home. She watched as her father lifted his camera to take a photograph. We call it a blur. The human memory is flawed. The pictures we form in our minds are made of a combination of memories … we fill in the blanks, as it were. When she couldn’t quite picture her father’s face it got replaced with another memory of him. Yes, he died in a brutal and bloody accident at the construction site where he worked. She said … when he took the camera away from his face part of it had fallen away. It was, understandably, very traumatic. It is one of the major problems we are having with the technology … at the moment it is too dependent on the subject’s own memories. We didn’t. We decided that the best thing to do would be to … persevere. To continue with the process. But – yes. Trixie’s family were not pleased … they tried to pull her out of the experiment and pay for the Procedure instead but, of course, Trixie’s wishes had been made clear. I agreed to be observed, yes.

This time, Helen’s back was poker straight. She was wearing a suit, her files piled neatly at her side. On the other side of the bed, a stern figure typed something on a tablet. The tapping of his fingers rang through the silence.

“Beatrice, I’m going to go through my list of questions. I need you to be as clear as you can.” The old woman was still … absent. The hand that Helen dare not touch twitched, and then nothing.

“Did you bring her out?” Helen nodded.

“Trixie wake up now.” She leant over, tugged on Trixie’s shoulder. Nothing. Silence. The stranger moved to the computer. “I don’t understand –“

“According to the readings, she should be out and conscious.” He pulled at Trixie’s eyelids; shone a torch inside.

No. I mean, she hasn’t woken yet.

#Nostalgia #Fragics #EP #Short Story #Story #Fiction #Author #Future

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