Demolition Lovers'
Demolition Lovers'
Demolition Lovers
...falling...
Floating
Down. Into the Abyss. Away.
Too slowly for my liking, but it’ll have to do. I can still hear them. Only faintly. But it’s enough. Enough to know that I’m still hanging on. I’m the last baby tooth, suspended in midair by a miniature strip of flesh. The strength slowly receding until Bam! Gone forever.
“... aye, seems to be a strong lad, there aren’t many who’d survive a bang up like that.” I can hear them, louder now. Can’t they just leave me to die? I don’t want to be saved. I don’t want to wake up and have to carry on living my crazy train crash of a life. I don’t need to! There’s no one left for me. No family. No friends. NOTHING! All I want now is for them to leave me the hell alone until the end of time itself. Obviously this is too much to ask.
*****
I’ve always felt on the edge, the odd one out. I realised a long time ago that I was never going to be cool, and recently I realised that I don’t fucking mind. At school people always saw me as the kid at the back of the class wearing black that nobody would hang out with. They taunted me, made jokes behind my back and to my face. It was usually stuff like “What you gonna do tonight...Hang yourself out with the washing?” For some strange reason they thought this was hilarious, so I usually just ignored them. Stupid shitheads.
****
Instead. Most nights I lie awake. Feeling the loneliness creeping down my spine. Listening to my darkening thoughts. Angry at my parents. Never understanding. Always criticising the way I dress, the music I listen to. I guess they think I’m not good enough to be their (prejudiced international business consultants) son. I feel like I’m letting them down. Always. It tears me apart to see their shame, but I’m never going to change.
I’m such an awful fuck, but I can’t stop feeling this pain.
Burning my skin, the lick of a blade as I make the first cut today. The scars of the past fuelling me on. They make me even more angry and ashamed of myself. But it’s an addiction, one I can’t let go of. Crimson flowing down from my shoulders...mingling with the water. Horrible diluted browny red colour.
****
Several years ago (the day after my eighteenth birthday) a policeman turned up at the door. I could tell it wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting. He had the ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve out some bad news for you’ face on.
I didn’t cry when I heard the news. I didn’t cry at the funeral. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, at my own parent’s funeral, because I was the only close relative. All the others were ‘freinds’ (mainly my parent’s work colleagues, prejudiced fuck faces, looking down on me).
I got a girlfriend. Helena. We were a messed up pair. But together we were killing loneliness. We both wore the same haunted expression of someone who has nothing left to give. But we held on. We shared our scars.Neither of us ever considered suicide, we both shared the same opinion that it was the most selfish thing anyone could ever do no matter how bad things were. There was a nickname for us that people used behind our backs ‘the Demolition Lovers’ we figured it was because we often looked like we’d just walked away from a bombsite. Joking that it wasn’t a fashion statement, it was a fucking death wish.
She’d had leukaemia, but had been fine for the last two years. The doctors thought they’d seen the back of it and so did she. After we’d been together for about nine months I met Helena after work as usual. We went to our favourite bar, but after half an hour Helena got a nosebleed and it wouldn’t stop. I drove her to A&E where they immediately hooked her up. Leukaemia was paying another visit. The doctors said that her body wasn’t responding to the medicine anymore, all her organs were slowly shutting down and even if there was a matching donor she probably wouldn’t survive the surgery. I’d only just started living again, and now this. My girlfriend dying. I stayed with her the whole time for over a week. She kept saying she was going to beat it once and for all this time. But I could see she was only saying it for my benefit because there was an eerie emptiness in her eyes. I could see her getting more tired by the hour. I was falling apart inside. I held her hand and kissed her.
Another funeral. Alone once more. I’m consumed in grief. The walls I built to hide behind have crumbled and I’m lost. I can’t see what I’ve got left to live for. People are scared of me, never quite sure whether to offer to help me or keep their distance. They can see the pain in my eyes. Sometimes I have to stop in the middle of the street and wrap my arms around myself so I don’t just run screaming. My senses have gone, I don’t feel, I don’t see clearly, I don’t taste the food that I rarely eat, I only hear a muffled confusion of words whirring through my ears. Blindly I lash out at myself. Over and over.
Suicide has chased me but I won’t give in yet. Let it seem like an accident. I’m so out of it that any day soon I’ll probably fall down the stairs, or if I’m lucky I might step out into the road without looking. All I want is to get away from this world that I have imagined, get away from the real world and get away from loneliness. When I die I just want peace.
*****
A guy gets run into by a bus. Everything stops, everybody as still as a hunk of rock - just for a hundredth of a second. Then, too fast to be real, the vultures descend. “Somebody call an ambulance!” they cry. “Oh my god...is he dead!?” The alarm ringing through all of their voices as they unknowingly fight their natural instinct to flee from the turmoil. Flee from the chaos that has swept down onto the street as quickly as it will leave. Flee, from the stench of death, hovering on the sidelines.
I can feel a heavy numbness seeping through my muscles. Morphine. So they think I’m in pain? I’m not. I’m too far gone to feel pain. I can tell that this is life. Pain is just a simple compromise so we can get what we want out of it. Death is almost tangible. There’s a stench like rotting flesh combined with freesias and that fresh, slightly bitter smell of a clear frosty night. It’s vile, yet oddly appealing. I wander if it was like this for Helena. I doubt it though, she didn’t deserve torture like this.
My heart is beating erratically. Never staying the same for more than a few seconds. At the moment it’s working overtime. Beating so fast I can hardly tell if it’s beating at all:
BADUMBADUMBADUMBADUMBADUM
Suddenly beating so slowly that I can feel the hot rush of the blood coursing through my veins as it reaches the very tips of my fingers and then gets sucked back. Like the waves in the sea.
BA-DUM...BA-DUM...BA-DUM
There are times when I feel completely and utterly helpless. My heart beating so randomly that I’m not sure when it’s next beat will come.
BADUMBADUMBADUMBADUMBADUMB
Eventually my heart stops. Completely. My shallow rattling breaths halt on the intake. I’m gone.
There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Only impenetrable darkness, swallowing all that has, does and will exist. It’s stifling hot and completely silent for what seems like an eternity.
Suddenly I’m thrust into what I imagined hell would be like. A completely flat expanse of hard blackness, stretching out in all directions. Smokey grey mist is billowing all around me. It’s bitterly cold. The wind is blowing so hard, that I would be on my back in a second if it weren’t for the fact that it was blowing at me from all directions. My clothes have been exchanged for scraps of thin spider-webbish material. It’s faded black and has the feel of velour. You’re probably thinking that it sounds alright and it would be – if it weren’t for the brittle splinters lancing and chafing me all over.
A slender hand grabs me by the elbow and hauls me up from where I have been crouching. It’s a girl - I don’t know how old or anything because she appears to have about ten layers of the terrible material wrapped all over her body – she hands me some more scraps of material and I quickly wrap myself up. The coldness is unbearable.
I notice that there are thousands like us, flitting about, riding the wind. So many questions swimming round my head. (Where the hell am I? What am I? Who is she?). They are immediately answered by the girl...through her thoughts. It’s surprising, but I can tell why, the wind is so loud you wouldn’t able to hear any band playing fifty yards away with the amps’ on full.
I am inside death, become part of it. The stench is even worse here, but even stronger is the smell of utter terror. The terror of all the other souls who have been trapped here is unbearable. I start to scream uncontrollably. A scream of terror, surprise and anger. The girl is Helena. The anger is because she ended up here, it’s not fair, she shouldn’t have to suffer this for a filthy shit of a disease taking her life. I just want to curl up on the ground and get swept along.
I never wanted it to be this way at all.
Fuck this. Helena won’t let me. She turns and points to a wave of air, coming rapidly towards us. We leap up onto it. I’m surfing a wave of air! It’s terrifying; there are thousands of us up here. I can see less fortunate people being swept along at the bottom. I wonder what will happen to them; surely you can’t die in hell?
Helena tells me that this is what we (the people who give up on life, the selfish ones, the criminals and trouble makers) are condemned to do for the rest of eternity and beyond. The Demolition Lovers are back together, battling the loneliness. Riding the wind. Keeping warm. If you don’t then you will be sent to a worse place than this.
There’s no rest for the wicked.
...falling...
Floating
Down. Into the Abyss. Away.
Too slowly for my liking, but it’ll have to do. I can still hear them. Only faintly. But it’s enough. Enough to know that I’m still hanging on. I’m the last baby tooth, suspended in midair by a miniature strip of flesh. The strength slowly receding until Bam! Gone forever.
“... aye, seems to be a strong lad, there aren’t many who’d survive a bang up like that.” I can hear them, louder now. Can’t they just leave me to die? I don’t want to be saved. I don’t want to wake up and have to carry on living my crazy train crash of a life. I don’t need to! There’s no one left for me. No family. No friends. NOTHING! All I want now is for them to leave me the hell alone until the end of time itself. Obviously this is too much to ask.
*****
I’ve always felt on the edge, the odd one out. I realised a long time ago that I was never going to be cool, and recently I realised that I don’t fucking mind. At school people always saw me as the kid at the back of the class wearing black that nobody would hang out with. They taunted me, made jokes behind my back and to my face. It was usually stuff like “What you gonna do tonight...Hang yourself out with the washing?” For some strange reason they thought this was hilarious, so I usually just ignored them. Stupid shitheads.
****
Instead. Most nights I lie awake. Feeling the loneliness creeping down my spine. Listening to my darkening thoughts. Angry at my parents. Never understanding. Always criticising the way I dress, the music I listen to. I guess they think I’m not good enough to be their (prejudiced international business consultants) son. I feel like I’m letting them down. Always. It tears me apart to see their shame, but I’m never going to change.
I’m such an awful fuck, but I can’t stop feeling this pain.
Burning my skin, the lick of a blade as I make the first cut today. The scars of the past fuelling me on. They make me even more angry and ashamed of myself. But it’s an addiction, one I can’t let go of. Crimson flowing down from my shoulders...mingling with the water. Horrible diluted browny red colour.
****
Several years ago (the day after my eighteenth birthday) a policeman turned up at the door. I could tell it wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting. He had the ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve out some bad news for you’ face on.
I didn’t cry when I heard the news. I didn’t cry at the funeral. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, at my own parent’s funeral, because I was the only close relative. All the others were ‘freinds’ (mainly my parent’s work colleagues, prejudiced fuck faces, looking down on me).
I got a girlfriend. Helena. We were a messed up pair. But together we were killing loneliness. We both wore the same haunted expression of someone who has nothing left to give. But we held on. We shared our scars.Neither of us ever considered suicide, we both shared the same opinion that it was the most selfish thing anyone could ever do no matter how bad things were. There was a nickname for us that people used behind our backs ‘the Demolition Lovers’ we figured it was because we often looked like we’d just walked away from a bombsite. Joking that it wasn’t a fashion statement, it was a fucking death wish.
She’d had leukaemia, but had been fine for the last two years. The doctors thought they’d seen the back of it and so did she. After we’d been together for about nine months I met Helena after work as usual. We went to our favourite bar, but after half an hour Helena got a nosebleed and it wouldn’t stop. I drove her to A&E where they immediately hooked her up. Leukaemia was paying another visit. The doctors said that her body wasn’t responding to the medicine anymore, all her organs were slowly shutting down and even if there was a matching donor she probably wouldn’t survive the surgery. I’d only just started living again, and now this. My girlfriend dying. I stayed with her the whole time for over a week. She kept saying she was going to beat it once and for all this time. But I could see she was only saying it for my benefit because there was an eerie emptiness in her eyes. I could see her getting more tired by the hour. I was falling apart inside. I held her hand and kissed her.
Another funeral. Alone once more. I’m consumed in grief. The walls I built to hide behind have crumbled and I’m lost. I can’t see what I’ve got left to live for. People are scared of me, never quite sure whether to offer to help me or keep their distance. They can see the pain in my eyes. Sometimes I have to stop in the middle of the street and wrap my arms around myself so I don’t just run screaming. My senses have gone, I don’t feel, I don’t see clearly, I don’t taste the food that I rarely eat, I only hear a muffled confusion of words whirring through my ears. Blindly I lash out at myself. Over and over.
Suicide has chased me but I won’t give in yet. Let it seem like an accident. I’m so out of it that any day soon I’ll probably fall down the stairs, or if I’m lucky I might step out into the road without looking. All I want is to get away from this world that I have imagined, get away from the real world and get away from loneliness. When I die I just want peace.
*****
A guy gets run into by a bus. Everything stops, everybody as still as a hunk of rock - just for a hundredth of a second. Then, too fast to be real, the vultures descend. “Somebody call an ambulance!” they cry. “Oh my god...is he dead!?” The alarm ringing through all of their voices as they unknowingly fight their natural instinct to flee from the turmoil. Flee from the chaos that has swept down onto the street as quickly as it will leave. Flee, from the stench of death, hovering on the sidelines.
I can feel a heavy numbness seeping through my muscles. Morphine. So they think I’m in pain? I’m not. I’m too far gone to feel pain. I can tell that this is life. Pain is just a simple compromise so we can get what we want out of it. Death is almost tangible. There’s a stench like rotting flesh combined with freesias and that fresh, slightly bitter smell of a clear frosty night. It’s vile, yet oddly appealing. I wander if it was like this for Helena. I doubt it though, she didn’t deserve torture like this.
My heart is beating erratically. Never staying the same for more than a few seconds. At the moment it’s working overtime. Beating so fast I can hardly tell if it’s beating at all:
BADUMBADUMBADUMBADUMBADUM
Suddenly beating so slowly that I can feel the hot rush of the blood coursing through my veins as it reaches the very tips of my fingers and then gets sucked back. Like the waves in the sea.
BA-DUM...BA-DUM...BA-DUM
There are times when I feel completely and utterly helpless. My heart beating so randomly that I’m not sure when it’s next beat will come.
BADUMBADUMBADUMBADUMBADUMB
Eventually my heart stops. Completely. My shallow rattling breaths halt on the intake. I’m gone.
There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Only impenetrable darkness, swallowing all that has, does and will exist. It’s stifling hot and completely silent for what seems like an eternity.
Suddenly I’m thrust into what I imagined hell would be like. A completely flat expanse of hard blackness, stretching out in all directions. Smokey grey mist is billowing all around me. It’s bitterly cold. The wind is blowing so hard, that I would be on my back in a second if it weren’t for the fact that it was blowing at me from all directions. My clothes have been exchanged for scraps of thin spider-webbish material. It’s faded black and has the feel of velour. You’re probably thinking that it sounds alright and it would be – if it weren’t for the brittle splinters lancing and chafing me all over.
A slender hand grabs me by the elbow and hauls me up from where I have been crouching. It’s a girl - I don’t know how old or anything because she appears to have about ten layers of the terrible material wrapped all over her body – she hands me some more scraps of material and I quickly wrap myself up. The coldness is unbearable.
I notice that there are thousands like us, flitting about, riding the wind. So many questions swimming round my head. (Where the hell am I? What am I? Who is she?). They are immediately answered by the girl...through her thoughts. It’s surprising, but I can tell why, the wind is so loud you wouldn’t able to hear any band playing fifty yards away with the amps’ on full.
I am inside death, become part of it. The stench is even worse here, but even stronger is the smell of utter terror. The terror of all the other souls who have been trapped here is unbearable. I start to scream uncontrollably. A scream of terror, surprise and anger. The girl is Helena. The anger is because she ended up here, it’s not fair, she shouldn’t have to suffer this for a filthy shit of a disease taking her life. I just want to curl up on the ground and get swept along.
I never wanted it to be this way at all.
Fuck this. Helena won’t let me. She turns and points to a wave of air, coming rapidly towards us. We leap up onto it. I’m surfing a wave of air! It’s terrifying; there are thousands of us up here. I can see less fortunate people being swept along at the bottom. I wonder what will happen to them; surely you can’t die in hell?
Helena tells me that this is what we (the people who give up on life, the selfish ones, the criminals and trouble makers) are condemned to do for the rest of eternity and beyond. The Demolition Lovers are back together, battling the loneliness. Riding the wind. Keeping warm. If you don’t then you will be sent to a worse place than this.
There’s no rest for the wicked.