riptidewritings

[riptidewritings]

i wrote a thing because i miss them

Phil has a headache.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62104774

[riptidewritings]

He smells like onion bhajis and too much cologne. Yellowed teeth greet me, and it’s a struggle not to shudder at how sweaty his hand is.

[riptidewritings]

the air outside my front door smells like an old friend’s house.

something like elderflowers and a specific detergent. the crispness of a new air freshener, the plug-in ones that’ve been all over the telly.

peer through the porthole; the door opens. carpet, once cream, now a permanent muddy beige. shoes off, piled haphazardly wherever there’s space.

to the right, downstairs bedrooms. parents. guest. a bathroom. a staircase, skylight-lit, only for lucy and max.

to the left, the sitting room. faded red sofas low to the ground. an old fireplace, more decoration than anything. they’re never here in the winter. shelves dusty with DVDs and box sets.

straight ahead, the kitchen. bright. happy windows and full shelves. abandoned cereal bowls and the hum of the dishwasher. further down, the garage, now only used for laundry and table tennis. beyond, the garden. a trampoline and mulberry bushes, careful not to get any of the juices on you, they’ll stain! eyes squeezed against the sourness. moss and grass and a beech tree with a swing.

rainstorms and dog walks and crabbing and tv marathons. too many sweets, burning our tongues when we ought to know better. a small forever in the summer places we called home.

i know all of this, but it’s been years. where do i put the knowledge of the spaces you grew up in, the ones that shaped us, moulded us? the creak of the side-gate, the crunch of the gravel. hello, anyone home? we’re going to the beach, do you want to come with us?

[riptidewritings]

her fingers are blue. she stares down the road, down to where the hills blend into the horizon. she still can’t see the bus.

[riptidewritings]

the lights are too bright, too blue, and his palms are itchy, hot and burning where he’s gripping his mug. he stares at the cupboard, the one with the janky hinge that always sticks, and his eyes sting. don’t look at him, don’t look at him, don’t look at him.

[riptidewritings]

she bites into the peach carefully, minding her teeth on the hard stone. the flesh gives way beneath her onslaught, juices dribbling down her chin.

[riptidewritings]

my horizon used to be mountains. soaring peaks, green valleys, birdsong and rain. it’s all gone now, swallowed up by the tidal wave slowing rolling towards my bedroom window. it stretches across the sea, cavernous and carnivorous. i wonder what it leaves behind. will the mountains still be there once the wave has washed us all away? once my bedroom window and all the flowers in my garden have been forgotten by their own shadows? who will we be when the world is an ocean, with nowhere soft to lay our heads?

[riptidewritings]

everything’s greyer, somehow, than it was yesterday. like the sun is losing its warmth as we stare at it, blind, wishing we’d forget how to see the black spots dancing behind our eyelids.

[riptidewritings]

There’s something dead on her roof. She knows this because she can hear the crows cawing, fighting for scraps. She sees the seagulls circling every morning as she leaves for work, their beady eyes burning a hole in the back of her neck until she returns, hours later.

At night, when the wind picks up and the sea is roaring outside her window, when the whole building trembles in fear of the icy salt spray, she burrows under the covers and pretends that she is home, in her mother’s arms. That the rocking of the ramshackle, leaking hovel is in fact her mother soothing her to sleep, and the shrieking hurricane is nothing more than a lullaby.

None of that exists anymore.

[riptidewritings]

i kiss her, and she tastes dead.

but of course she would. she’s been asleep for a thousand years.

my eyes are open, and her lips are blue. the air is still.

a half moon emerges from a dark cloud, and the room turns silver. gold threads glisten in her dress, the silk in tatters. i watch as the rose in her hands crumbles away.

this isn’t how it was foretold. this shouldn’t be how it ends.

i kiss her again. she does nothing. her chest does not rise and fall as the tide. her lips do not bloom pink as dawn.

she lies as winter does.

what else am i to do?

dust notes dance before my eyes. i was not prepared for this. my whole life leading up to a singularity, but no after. only before, only during. no next. no then. no ending.

[riptidewritings]

I remember when I first noticed the thin white scar on her wrist. It had been glaring at me from across the table, just peeking out of her shirt cuff.

It was clearly old, not puckered and fresh. The intention was clear in its jagged cruelty, not surgical neatness. It was curved faintly, almost like it was smiling.

I suppose, had I cared more, I’d have noticed sooner. I’d seen her in t-shirts before. But here she was, wearing a full-sleeve shirt in the middle of a September heatwave. There were pit stains appearing under her armpits, visible even from a table-width away.

I’d never have glanced twice at her wrists if she hadn’t been trying to cover them. Thinking about it, that should’ve told me straight away that something was different.

But here we are. Too late now.

They’d called me in to identify her. She’d been in the river a good few days now, they said. She was all swollen and bloated, like a drowned corpse. Like nothing, really. That’s all she was, now.

Her skin was grey. Looking at her, all I could see was the beached whale we’d found last summer, its skin cracked and sunken. If I’d known then what I should’ve known all along, maybe we wouldn’t’ve ended up here.

There were purplish lines all the way up and down her arms, crossing with older, paler scars like a board of snakes and ladders. There were some on her thighs, too, like she’d been playing hide-and-seek with her stretch marks.

I knew it was her immediately, even if I barely recognised her.

[riptidewritings]

The wind feels wrong.

He stands at the edge of the world. The chatter of the crowds behind him fade as he gazes out towards the horizon, glinting in the clear blue sky.

Something is going to happen soon.

The wind ruffles his hair, pushing it into his eyes. He blinks, but makes no move to fix it.

The world is holding its breath.

He feels a tug at his shirt, a gentle shove at his back, though he is completely alone. He steps closer to the brink, to the broken fencing around the cliff edge and the gap that could set him free.

The sun dips behind a cloud, plunging everything into shadow, and he hears a scream behind him. It sounds muffled, as though his ears are full of cotton wool, or as if he is deep underwater, sinking into the comforting void, giving himself back to the sea.

The sun comes out, its rays a mother’s hand on his cheek, and he blinks awake, coming back to himself. He was somewhere else, just then. Someone else entirely.

It takes more effort than it should to wrench his gaze from the blue abyss in front of him. A gull cries, loud and lonely, above him, and he flinches back. He doesn’t remember climbing through the fence, but there he stands, barely a step away from the drop that would solve all of his problems.

He steps back, against the wind. It is more difficult than it should be for him to turn around, put the horizon behind him, and look back to where, only minutes before, the coast were teeming with life, pinkish bodies and living beings, stretching out either side of him to the east and to the west.

There is no one there anymore. The beaches are empty. The world is silent.

He is alone.

[riptidewritings]

I wish I could get drunk without having a breakdown.

Have a glass of wine without feeling like I need to finish the bottle. Walk into a bar without vomiting my self-worth into my notes app, just so I don’t bring the mood of the party down.

I’m twenty-three. Shouldn’t I be having fun?

There’s a half-bottle of wine left on our table, and she’s gone to the bathroom. It’s winking at me seductively. The lipstick stains on her glass are cooing, go on, it won’t hurt. You’ll be alright! You’ve already cried once this week, really, what are the chances it’ll happen again? Especially with the amount of medication you’re on, all the types that don’t really let you cry.

The sea-glass-green bottle is beautiful in the artificial sunlight. The cap makes a high-pitched scritching noise as it unscrews itself.

These words are being forced out of me. I have no agency here. There’s nothing I can do to stop the thread unspooling. I want to be honest. I want to tell you the truth.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to me in the next few pages. I hope she’ll come back from the bathroom, and the bottle will be the same weight it was when she left. I hope she’ll smile at me in that way of hers, and we’ll fall together like we used to do. But I don’t think I believe that.

The bottle is light, but the glass is heavy. It splinters on the linoleum like a hailstone. It leaves a mark on the floor that will never fully buff out, always be a reminder of what happened here.

The wine is blood-red and hot, cooling quickly on the icy ground. How did I get here? Where did I bury myself this time? A snow-drift on the side of the road. It’ll take her days to notice I’m even gone, and what then? I know she won’t miss me.

The wine is keeping me warm. It’s staining my hands, my favourite cream jumper. I won’t be wearing it again.

I can hear her in the distance, calling for me like she used to, when I’d get lost in a crowd and she didn’t know where she was.

I think there’s a light in the distance. It’s beautiful and soft, like a flame. I sink towards it carefully. Maybe she’ll be there too.

"Baby?"

"Oh, my love, you’ve found me. I’m so happy you’re here."

"I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop, I just—"

"Shh, shh, it’s alright. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re together again. Come closer to the fire, my love, come here and sit with me."

"I love you."

Her hands are ice. "I know."

[riptidewritings]

these days, i carry you with me in little ways. how i skip stones across water. how i scuff my trainers. how i can’t eat any more sour sweets because we burned our tongues when we were thirteen.

[riptidewritings]

She dreads the day when the colour begins disappearing from the world. When the warmth leeches out of the soft earth and drifts skywards like a balloon out of a child’s clutched fist.

[riptidewritings]

After, when it is too late, I will notice the signs.

The vacant stares. The sudden silences, the too-loud laughter.

No, it wasn’t my job to save them. But I could have at least tried to.

It was sunny that day. The rain had finally let up, the clouds parting after weeks of drizzle to remind us that the sky was still blue even when we couldn’t see it.

[riptidewritings]

There are maggots at the bottom of the bin.

Maggie knows this because one fell out when she kicked it yesterday. It had flopped around, a tiny, squirming thing, looking for the nearest thing to latch onto.

Maggie hadn’t screamed. She knew better than that. She had simply stared at it in disgust, before stepping on it. She’d felt that fleshy mush stuck to the bottom of her bare foot for the rest of the day.