I am the apotheosis of insanity.

Forbidden Room Extract

On the bus, are a mother and daughter sitting at the far end facing me. The mother is staring at the little girl.

"st, st, you say st, then step"

The little girl's staring at a book she's writing in. A strange high pitched, nonsensical gibbering comes from her mouth. Gabbling nonsense that wavers between the limits of human hearing and a pitch that only dogs can sense.

"st, st, st, st, st, st, st, st, step"

Still she writes and keens in her own language.

"You say st. Push your tongue against the top of your mouth, at the front, and force the air through. St, st, st, st"

The girl looks up at her mother and smiles like an angel. Gibber, gibber, gibber, gabble, gabble, gabble.

Her lips don't move.

"St, st, st, st, st, st, st".

Then she looks up at me, winks, and in a deep, guttural voice that emanates from her bowels, booms in my head......

"Step forward"

I begin to shake.

End of The Line Extract

I get on the tube every morning, squeeze into a corner, try not to catch anyone’s eye and stand there staring straight ahead on the verge of tears wanting to be back in bed. All I crave is to sit down and close my eyes, shut out the smell, the heat, but I can’t escape the bodies around me. Then it stops at the station and I’m pushed and shoved over the platform and squeezed onto the elevator. I never walk up always stand with my eyes shut tight, pretending I’m still in the dream world that I didn’t want to leave an hour before. All around me extras from some evil film trudge past, every person the same, a whole metropolis of zombies. The grey suits they wear slowly crawl up their neck and cover their faces until all I see are walking suits with buttons for eyes. I have to contend with this everyday I have to live in this world to survive. Then through the ticket barrier pushed and shoved again by the faceless many, all silently cursing their private hell, misery upon misery forced down my throat as I gag on the stench, the collective horror that walks before my eyes. Faceless autocrats in their fluorescent coats herd us into noiseless pens that swing open as I identify myself to the camera in the sky that marks my journey whilst I swipe my electronic tag through the barrier. Everyday the pressure building up behind my eyeballs until I want to cry out loud, Oh Lord why me? Then I’m vomited into the cold light where the sound of traffic announces my brief arrival into the real world of light and sounds. Still cold, harsh but real, until I’m snagged by the swinging doors of my office and gobbled up into the maw of the climbing beast that deposits me in my chair, where I’m strapped to the computer to prevent escape. I sit at the desk, turn on the machine and stare, waiting, the little beep sounds like a heart monitor. The first call is the hardest, like waiting for an injection. You anticipate the pain and it stings at first, but then the anaesthetic kicks in till you can feel nothing, just the tugging as the tooth is pulled out.

Think upon it, an endless plain of green filling the horizon in every direction, and still your voice speaks to me over the steppe. Whisper my love, whisper in my ear. A tender touch upon your heart, and a silent scream in the night yearning for the return. Then I wake, damp in my sheets, realising that the truth has eluded me yet again, gone into the dreamscape, only to be revealed in the velvet touch of sleep. The velvet touch, even the bringing of those words to my lips makes me sad. Velvet touch, below the hairline, forever crafted in the creases that line the route to my soul. How near and yet so far.

Slowly the memory fades, till I'm left with naught but the faint caress of a forgotten sigh. Lost to me now, lost along with the rest and filled with the pain of my deeps. Deeps that go on forever, an endless epiphany of night without the relief the half light. Dark, like the crevasse of your heart.